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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

Students participate in a contrived natural selection simulation in which they build and modify simple paper airplanes. They study divergent and convergent evolution and how it is isolated in sub-populations.

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...

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...