A video about the impact of climate change on butterfly populations and a PowerPoint about butterfly and bird adaptations warm science learners up for the activity to follow. Using a variety of tools that reprsent unique styles of bird...

Find photos of bird beaks or show a prepared four slide PowerPoint, "Extreme Beaks" to introduce your class to this special animal adaptation. Provide them with a data table and supplies to try gathering food with tools that each...

Don't just tell your class about Darwin's finches ... show them! Sort some of science's most famous birds using an interactive lesson. Learners try their hand at classifying finches using song, sonogram, and beak appearance, as well as...

Emerging ecologists need a full understanding of life, from the inner workings of a cell to the complex relationships among organisms. This examination is meant to assess high schoolers after an entire year of courses on the living...

The New York Regents High School Examinations are comprehensive and include various question formats, including multiple choice and graph analysis. This particular version, the 2008 Living Environment exam, surveys a variety of topics....

Environmental science enthusiasts show what they know at the end of the year by taking this full-fledged final exam. They answer multiple-choice, graph interpretation, and essay-analysis questions, 73 of them in all. Topics range from...

The 2005 version of the Regents High School Examination in ecology is as comprehensive as previous years' exams. It consists of 40 multiple-choice questions on topics ranging from the structure of DNA to interactions within an ecosystem....

The living environment, from the interior of a cell to the complex relationships among populations, is queried in this final examination. Learners examine air pollution maps, cell diagrams, population graphs, and drawings of cells. They...

Students become birds and are given "beak-types". After completing the simulation, students relate results to adaptations and natural selection. Extensions of the simulation allow for comparative results and include population genetics.

Teens experience natural selection firsthand (or first beak) in an activity that has them act as finches foraging for food. Using different household items  to act as different beak styles, your little finches will collect as much...

One of the most striking pieces of evidence for Darwin's Evolution of Species was his observations of finches and how their beaks differed from island to island, depending on their primary food sources. So what would happen to the theory...

Try a twist on the old finch beak and chopsticks activity by using M&Ms on a Twister mat. Spoons, knives, forks, and chopsticks represent beaks and are randomly assigned to your little birds, who must collect as much food as possible...

Students explore the adaptations that birds have.  In this adaptations lesson plan students view a video and create a concept map of birds and their adaptive traits.

An environmental factor, such as a drought, sometimes speeds up the rate of natural selection. Scholars analyze data on the beaks of birds around the time of the drought. They compare those that survived to those that perished and find...

Why is diversity in biology so important for an ecosystem? Explore biodiversity, evolution, and natural selection with a presentation for your biology class. It features clear information, activities for further understanding, and...

Explorers of the environment construct a dichotomous key for a variety of organisms and design a key to classify Galapagos animals based on descriptions and images. The lesson includes a link to an animal gallery and the worksheet for...

For this earth history worksheet, high schoolers visit a website and complete 15 fill in the blank and 8 short answer questions based on what they read. Topics include biodiversity, animal kingdoms, evolution, fossils, and extinction.

Explore how environmental conditions affect the adaptation of birds in this simulation. The amount of annual precipitation on an island is controlled by you while you track changes in the thickness of bird beaks over a five-year period....

In this biology activity, students will be investigating evolution by "competing" for food like Darwin's finches might have competed. Each student group is given a different type of "beak" to work with and there are also different kinds...

Interactive animation illustrates how Charles Darwin used his study of finch beaks to explain evolution. A phylogenetic tree diagram shows how the birds' color and beak shape changed over generations.