OpenSciEd Unit 8.6 · Lesson 04 · 4.B
Develop an explanation that predicts what the variati…
From Teacher Edition
Facilitation guidance from the lesson plan — what to notice in student thinking and how to respond while teaching.
Building towards
4.B Develop an explanation that predicts what the variation in a chosen body structure or behavior of Galápagos penguins and king penguins looks like at different scales (between species versus between individuals within a population).
What to do
If students are struggling with differentiating the between-species and within-population variations, use the height example as a comparison and walk them through the sequence of thinking for comparing height, then ask the students to do the same for the structure they chose. Two good options to steer students toward are weight and incubation time.
The reason this distinction is important to establish now is that eventually we need to figure out that some individuals will have variations that make them more successful (at getting resources, escaping predators, attracting mates, and so forth) under certain conditions compared to other individuals in the same population with different variations.