Science Methods - Week 9

     This week in class we discussed more about genetic diversity and specifically natural selection.

In class we did an activity to see which utensil would gather the most beans and be best suited to the environment. The loser would then adapt and change utensils to become more capable of survival.

    I was able to learn about natural selection through examples and some activities. I learned that natural selection is what happens when environmental factors, whether biotic or abiotic, influence the survival of a species and because of that, the species develops certain traits that help them overcome. These traits come in the form of mutations and make themselves known in the species through reproduction and the passing on of those individuals with inferior traits. For example, we played an activity which involved bunnies. We could choose the bunnies to have factors in their environment that would limit their populations, whether they were difficult to eat foods, wolves, or a limited supply of food. Each one of these factors would nearly eliminate the bunny population, but if we introduced a mutation to counter it, the bunnies with said mutation would pass on their mutation and there would be more bunnies able to counteract the environment and more bunnies would stay alive.

    I was able to relate this to what I already knew about natural selection, having already learned that it is what happens when individuals of a species either live more or less than fellow members of their species due to certain physical traits they carry. I could connect the activities we did to what I already knew and could see the connection and expand my knowledge of natural selection.

    I can apply this to my own teaching by examining the activities we did in class and taking a look at how they helped me learn and how they could help my future students learn. I think natural selection is a really important topic for students to understand and seeing the activities we did today help me get an idea of what I can do in the future.