Mississippi Science L.8.4B.1
The Standard
- L.8.4B
- Students will demonstrate an understanding of how similarities and differences among living and extinct species provide evidence that changes have occurred in organisms over time and that similarity of characteristics provides evidence of common ancestry.
Analyze and interpret data (e.g., pictures, graphs) to explain how natural selection may lead to increases and decreases in specific traits in populations over time.
2026 Mississippi College- and Career-Readiness Standards for Science · Adaptation and Diversity
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students read pictures or graphs to track how often a trait appears across generations. They use the data and an environmental change to explain why some individuals leave more offspring.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can use counts from several generations to identify which trait became more common. They can explain how survival and reproduction caused the shift, without saying individual animals changed their traits.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think an animal grows a helpful trait because it needs one. They may also mistake a rise in the total number of animals for a rise in a trait's share of the population.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: With birds hunting moths on dark trees, dark moths rise from 20 of 100 to 70 of 100 over five generations. Explain the change without saying individual moths changed color.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Scatter dark and light paper moths on dark paper; have student birds pick ten, duplicate survivors, and graph counts across three rounds.
Draw five light and five dark mice on tan paper; ask students to write which color may become more common if the sand darkens, and why.
Teams race to order cards showing 2, 5, and 8 insecticide-resistant beetles per 10 across generations, then explain the change.
Post mosquito counts before and after repeated spraying, 5 of 50 resistant then 35 of 50; ask students to explain the shift over generations.
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Printable L.8.4B.1 Worksheet
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Related Standards
- BIO.3B
Students will analyze and interpret data collected from probability calculations to explain the variation of expressed traits within a population.
- FB.5.4
Investigate how biological adaptations and genetic variations of traits in a population enhance the probability of survival in an environment (natural selection...
- L.3.4.3
Analyze and interpret data to explain how variations in characteristics among organisms of the same species may provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, ...
- ESS.3.8
Analyze and interpret the record of shared ancestry, evolution, and extinction as related to natural selection using fossils.
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