In Evolution, our class was tasked with creating a proposal and lesson plan for any age of students. My group decided to appeal to third grade students because we felt we could teach them the most and have fun at the same time. When thinking of what we should teach these students, we decided on basic vocabulary of evolution and a trait matching activity. In the vocabulary activity, students would do a crossword puzzle on one paper and then match the words on the crossword puzzle with the definitions on the other paper. The second activity allowed students to match traits and understand that some animals have the same trait. This activity stemmed from our knowledge on phylogenic trees. Our goal was to introduce students to the idea of phylogenic trees, yet not go into detail.

This project was one I enjoyed immensely because it allowed us to be creative and have fun. We were also able to present our ideas to our classmates and our professor. Through this project I learned how to work and present with others. I would enjoy presenting this to elementary school students as well. I believe teaching concepts early helps build a student’s mind. This project also allowed us to reach out to another group of people rather than just fellow biologists, which was a change of scenery.