Florida SC.7.L.15.3
The Standard
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 that species.
Florida Next Generation Sunshine State Standards for Science
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students analyze how environmental changes affect a population's survival and reproduction. They use evidence to explain why populations lacking helpful inherited traits may decline and eventually disappear.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Given a case, students identify the environmental pressure, available trait variation, and likely population outcome. They connect low survival and reproduction across generations to increased extinction risk.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think individual organisms choose to develop helpful traits. They may assume evolution always prevents extinction or happens within one lifetime. They may also confuse migration with the extinction of an entire species.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: A finch population has only narrow beaks, and after a drought, mostly hard seeds remain. In three sentences, explain why extinction risk rises and name one supporting piece of evidence.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Scatter paper beetles on a mat, remove visible beetles, copy survivors, then change the mat color and track population decline.
Discuss: Can an individual animal adapt because it needs to? Use inherited variation and reproduction in your response.
Play a card sort matching environmental changes, available traits, survival outcomes, and whether extinction risk rises or falls.
Plot annual rainfall and golden toad sightings, then explain how rapid habitat change and disease increased extinction risk.
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Printable SC.7.L.15.3 Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to SC.7.L.15.3, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.
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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.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.
- SC.7.L.15.2
Explore the scientific theory of evolution by recognizing and explaining ways in which genetic variation and environmental factors contribute to evolution by na...
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