Florida SC.7.L.15.2
The Standard
Explore the scientific theory of evolution by recognizing and explaining ways in which genetic variation and environmental factors contribute to evolution by natural selection and diversity of organisms.
Florida Next Generation Sunshine State Standards for Science
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students identify inherited differences within a population. They explain how environmental conditions make some traits more helpful, leading those traits to become more common across generations.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students can use evidence from a population example to connect variation, survival, reproduction, and change over time. They distinguish changes in populations from changes in individual organisms.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think individual organisms evolve because they need a trait. They may also think environments create helpful traits, rather than selecting from inherited variations already present.
How to Assess It
- Give students a beetle population with varied colors on dark soil. Ask which color may become more common after several generations and why.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Scatter two colors of paper moths on matching and contrasting backgrounds, then have student predators collect visible moths and compare survival rates.
Ask students to explain why a drought might change average beak size in a bird population over several generations.
Run a trait card game where food, temperature, and predators change each round, then graph which inherited traits remain.
Examine antibiotic resistance data and write how resistant bacteria become more common without antibiotics causing individual bacteria to change.
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Printable SC.7.L.15.2 Worksheet
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Related Standards
- SC.7.E.6.4
Explain and give examples of how physical evidence supports scientific theories that Earth has evolved over geologic time due to natural processes.
- SC.7.L.15.3
Explore the scientific theory of evolution by relating how the inability of a species to adapt within a changing environment may contribute to the extinction of...
- SC.5.L.15.1
Describe how, when the environment changes, differences between individuals allow some plants and animals to survive and reproduce while others die or move to n...
- SC.7.L.15.1
Recognize that fossil evidence is consistent with the scientific theory of evolution that living things evolved from earlier species.
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