To Book The Workshop:

  

Contact: Tony North

Email: tnorth67@hotmail.com

Tel: 07754 406422 or 0161 224 6445

 

Fee: £299 per class for a whole day. Max. 32 children.

 

Preparing for the Workshop

Topics covered:

1. Species - their enormous diversity

2. How species are grouped into hierarchies (e.g. dinosaurs are reptiles, which are vertebrates, which are animals).

3. The tree of life - how animals and plants evolved over millions of years forming a many-branched tree with numerous classes and species, each with distinctive features

4. Adaptation - how many of the features of living things are adaptations to their environments, helping them survive and reproduce in various ways (e.g. flippers helping dolphins and whales to swim, peacocks' feathers attracting peahens, spines protecting hedgehogs from predators).

5. Inheritance and variation - how offspring inherit qualities from their parents, and yet vary slightly from them (e.g. children look similar to their parents, and perhaps have similar skills or personalities)

 

Fossils for sale

Children can buy genuine fossils at all science workshops. These include sharks' teeth (see below), ammonites, seashells, corals, plants and more. Dinosaur and other animal toys and stickers may also be available. Prices range from 10p up to £2.

 

  

Teachers' comments

'The children were highly engaged and enthralled.' - Y6 teacher

'Mr North's impressive subject knowledge combined with his extensive range of resources enabled him to engage and motivate all pupils from the start.' - Y6 teacher

'The children really enjoyed the day and seemed to gain a lot from it (especially from such a difficult subject to grasp)' - Y5 teacher

 Read more

 

Photos from an Adaptation Workshop at St. Richard's in Manchester, Sept 15

 

 

Adaptation

 

1. Introduction to Evolution (15 minutes)

We begin with a question: why are there so many species of living thing? About 1.5 million are known, and according to some estimates there are over 10 million in all.

 

We discuss the idea that all living species have evolved over a vast period of time: they have changed in order to adapt to their environments. This began about 4 billion years ago with tiny bacteria and continues today. This leads us to an astounding fact - all living things are related.

 

The first person to explain how evolution worked was Charles Darwin. This workshop is all about the how and why of evolution - the tree of life and adaptation.

 

Next is a quick look at how animals are classified into groups - which themselves have evolved. We look at a few important animal phyla - cnidarians (jellyfish, corals, sea anemones), molluscs (squids, shellfish, snails), arthropods (insects, spiders, scorpions, centipedes), and vertebrates (fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, birds). Each of these groups is very different from the others, but all are related, although their common ancestors lived over 600 million years ago.

 

2. The Tree of Life (45 minutes)

We look at a large painted board (60x200cm, see below) which shows a simplified tree of life - the branches which show the relationships through time between the four phyla we have already looked at, as well as the main branches of vertebrates (fish, birds, mammals, etc. but also dinosaurs, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and primates). The geological periods and their dates are also marked, going back 660my (my=million years). For a detailed page on this topic go here.

Tree of Life game - click for larger version and see picture below

To learn about the tree and the periods of earth's history, children play a game: they are given a model of a prehistoric animal such as a dinosaur or ammonite. They are told its age in millions of years, and they must place it on the board in the right place - the right period and the right branch.

 

There follows a short quiz to enrich understanding - for example working out the period in which a type of animal first evolved (e.g. dinosaurs in the Triassic), or the ancestral history of modern groups (e.g. humans are apes descended from primates, then from mammals, reptiles, tetrapods, and fish).

 

 

Finally children work in their 8 teams with their own tree of life picture (click photo above). They must place 6 fossils (dinosaur bone, trilobite, ammonite, shark tooth, coral, crocodile tooth - see photo below) on the tree in the right place, and answer some more questions about the tree. This will enrich their understanding of the history of evolution.

Click for larger version

Ammonite, Dactylioceras commune, from Whitby: 190 my

        

Trilobite from USA: 500 my, and crocodile tooth: 80 my

 

3. Adaptation (60+ minutes)

Why do species have their particular features? Why have birds evolved feathers, and fish fins? We now look at adaptation - the countless ways in which animals have changed through evolution to survive and reproduce in their environments.

Spoonbill - it swishes its strange bill through the water, sensing and grabbing food

First we watch 3 short films (which I have made myself). These illustrate a few of the most important kinds of adaptation - for feeding, moving, and sensing.

 

After each film we discuss the various ways in which animals have adapted for that purpose. Then children look at three high quality, realistic animal models they have on their tables. Each group picks one and explain to the class how it is adapted for feeding, moving or sensing, depending on which film we have just watched. For example, they could explain how a tiger has sharp teeth and claws for killing prey, how a whale has evolved flippers for swimming, or how an eagle has developed very keen eyesight for spotting prey. Each group has a sheet of information on the animals to help them.

 

 

4. Further Adaptation Activities

Now this children (or the teacher) choose more activities to learn about other types of adaptation. We can continue this after lunch.

 

Options:

 

a. Film about raising babies

 

b. Camouflage game - look at photos and try to spot the animal, whether predator or prey (this is usually the next activity as it is very popular!)

Spot the spider (click for larger version)

c. Mimicry game - look at photos of animals (butterflies, frogs, wasps). Try to work out whether they belong to an unpalatable (poisonous) species, or are palatable mimics which have evolved to look like the unpalatable species, so as to avoid being eaten.

Monarch butterfly - tastes bad to predators

 

Is this a Monarch, or a Viceroy, which mimics the Monarch?

 

Lesson plan continues in next column

 

 

 

d. Evolution of Colour Vision - watch a short film to show how animals at first saw without colour, and then how the world looked different when colour vision evolved. Why would this be a useful adaptation?

At the time of the dinosaurs, mammals were nocturnal (to avoid being eaten!) and so lost colour vision (which does not work at night and may actually impair night vision). The film shows how a cat sees the world at night - much more brightly than we do.

Night vision of a human (top) and cat (bottom)

Colour vision in primates

About 30 million years ago, primates regained full colour vision, which is why we have it but most mammals do not. We try an experiment to try to learn why this happened - comparing photos of fruit trees with fruit which is red when ripe, and leaves which are red when younger and juicier.

A cherry tree as a colour blind monkey would see it (top) and as we see it (bottom) - click for larger version

 

5. Transitions (after lunch) (45 minutes)

We now put together our learning about the tree of life and adaptation by looking at important transitions in evolution. Children play a game in which they order pictures of four types of animal, to show how changes occurred over time. In each case palaentologists have identified an important transition fossil which we will look at.

The four types of animal and the relevant changes are:

a. Tetrapods - how fish evolved legs and became the first four legged land animals (from which all others, including oursleves, are descended).

b. Birds - how two legged therapods (predatory dinosaurs) evolved feathers and wings and eventually became modern birds

Archaeopteryx - a candidate for the first bird

  

c. Whales - how four-legged mammals took to the water in search of prey and eventually lost their digits, evolving flippers and becoming whales and dolphins

d. Humans - how our ancestors (such as Australopithecus and Homo erectus) evolved larger and larger brains leading to our own enormous brains today

 

After this children try to work out the adaptive reasons for each transition. For example, larger brains helped humans survive better in several ways, such as the ability to communicate important information such as where to find food, or which foods are poisonous. We look at some photos and models to help us understand these transitions - such as replicas of Australopithecus and modern human skulls, and a copy of the famous Archaeopteryx fossil.

 

6. Camouflage Experiment (45 minutes)

Next, we reenact the famous case of the evolution of the peppered moth. In the early 1800s this moth was a light, mottled colour (see below), camouflaged against the lichen-covered bark of trees in England.

  

 

By the end of the 19th century, in areas like Manchester, this form of the peppered moth had been almost entirely replaced by a darker mutant (see below). The reason was that industrial pollution had darkened the trees, so the lighter moths were no longer camouflaged and were being eaten by birds.

 

 

Children pretend to be a bird predator and try to spot the two varieties of moth on light and dark tree backgrounds. By comparing the numbers of moths seen, we will work out how evolution occurred in this situation.

This activity gives children an experimental understanding of how camouflage works, and it also gives us an introduction to the important concept of natural selection - the mechanism by which evolution works.

 

7. Alien Evolution Game (45 minutes)

 

If time allows, we play a fun game to finish the day. Each team is given one of 8 habitats and invents either a predator or prey animal, adapted both to its environment and to other animals. For example a cheetah is the fastest four legged animal with many adaptations to help it chase its prey, such as a very long and flexible spine. However, its prey, the Thompson's gazelle, is also one of the fastest animals on land and has evolved this speed to escape cheetahs.

Creature from the movie Avatar

 

The twist in this game is that we imagine we have travelled to another planet, so children can create brand new creatures - as long as they are properly adapted. They use marker pens and large sheets of paper to create their animals, and then present them to the class. With fossil prizes for the best presentation.

 

Desert habitat - others in the game are rainforest, savanna, ice cap, mountains, woodland, wetland, and coral reef

  

 

Adaptation and Inheritance

 

In this workshop you can give your children a bit of everything. We look at inheritance in the morning, then turn to the (conceptually easier) topics of the tree of life and adaptation in the afternoon. The afternoon session is similar to the morning session of the adaptation workshop - we cover activities 1-4 (see description above)

 

In the morning we look at inheritance, focusing on the mechanism of inheritance - chromosomes, genes, and the Mendelian laws of inheritance.

 

These vitally important ideas are difficult, so I have carefully crafted activities which will help children and teachers get to grips with them. To bring the concepts to life, and make them more fun, we use photos, dice, counters and cards, in a variety of games and simulations.

 

 

1. First we discuss inheritance - how we resemble our parents both physically and in our behaviour and personality.

 

Game- identify children from their parents. In 8 teams, children try to assign photos of children to photos of their parents (including both famous and non-famous families). We discuss how similar children are to their mothers and fathers, and why this might be (if time is short we will omit this game)

 

 

 

Lesson plan continues in next column

 

 

 

2. Genetics - we take a (simplified) look at how inheritance works, by means of chromosomes and genes, which come in pairs (called alleles).

 

photo of a chromosome - the DNA strands are visible

 

Sex Chromosomes

 

We look at how X and Y chromosomes are inherited to determine gender, using cards, counters and dice (see below). Children learn why half the world's population is male and half female, and yet in any one family there may be only boys or only girls - a matter of probability. Each team randomly creates a family of four using dice and we look at patterns across the class. We compare these data to the figures for the school, and the UK as a whole.

 

 

Genes

 

Next we focus on genes. Gregor Mendel's experiments on peas showed us how traits are caused by indivisible factors called genes, which come in pairs. One of the pair is often dominant- so a pea flower with a purple gene (P) and a white gene (p) will end up purple, as the purple gene is dominant.

 

The genotype for this flower is either PP or Pp - both result in a purple colour

 

The genotype for this flower must be pp (two recessive genes)

 

Using gene cards and dice we look at how a plant or animal inherits half of its genes from its mother and half from its father, but the halves are randomly selected from all the pairs of alleles. This is why two siblings can be very different from each other.

 

3. Cat Fur Colour

 

For the rest of the morning session we look at the inheritance of coat colour in cats. Cat colour is caused by several genes, which combine to produce an end result (the 'phenotype'). For example, a cat with the dominant white spotting gene and one dominant orange gene, if female, will usually be a white tortoiseshell (see below) - usually, because other genes can modify this pattern.

First we look at how the 'white spotting' gene (S) and the 'orange' gene (O) work separately. In each case after a demonstration children work in their groups, first working  out the genotype of cats in photos, using counters instead of letters to help make the concept clear.

 

 

As we see in the first cat above, a cat with one dominant white spotting gene and one recessive gene (Ss) will be less than half white (we assume the other colour is black for now). A cat with two dominant genes (SS) will be mostly white. A cat with two recessive genes will have no white (here, all black).

 

After this the teams use counters and cat phenotype cards to see what possible kittens come from parents with different genotypes. Children answer questions to help them grasp important features of inheritance - namely, how parental genotypes affect:

• the chance of different types of offspring

• the chance of offspring being different from their parents

• the amount of variation in offspring

Next, we look at how the white and orange genes have a combined effect. Again children solve photo puzzles. For example, a cat with Ss and Oo genes will be a tortoiseshell with some white patches (the first cat below):

 

 

Inheritance

In this workshop we spend the whole day on inheritance, allowing children to get a much deeper understanding of this tricky subject.

We carry out all the inheritance activities described in the adaptation and inheritance lesson, spending a little more time to ensure depth of understanding. In addition we have several more activites:

1. Simulation of 6 gene inheritance

After looking at the Mendelian model of how genes work, we use a diagram, playing cards (standing for genes), and dice to see how one baby might inherit 6 genes in a certain pattern, which might be different form its siblings. We randomise the inheritance of each allele and see how similar and different siblings can be from each other and also from their parents.

2. Twins

After the family game (at the start of the lesson), we look how identical twins share all their genes while non-identical twins share about 1/2 (like ordinary siblings).

Children play a game in which they sort 3 groups of photos - identical twins, non-identical twins, and unrelated friends. This teaches them how physical appearance is largely inherited, and how siblings can look very similar but also very different, because of the random mix of genes they get from their mothers and fathers. Includes the amazing case of the twins who appear to be of different races.

 

3. Cat Fur Colour Extension Activity

 

After looking at the interaction between the two fur colour genes (white spotting and orange), children are taught how to lay out the 16 possible kittens resulting from two parents. The photo below shows the board used by each team - similar to the tables used by scientists to work out gene combinations, known as Punnett Squares. Again teams answer questions about inheritance and variation in offspring.

The most interesting outcome of this activity is the fact that 2 parent cats can produce kittens with up to 9 different coat patterns. This is a vivid demonstration of genetic variation.

 

 

4. Mutation

We finish the day with a look at the vital importance of mutation in evolution.

The inheritance activities have shown children how genes combine to produce offspring which are similar to, but often different from, their parents - and their siblings too. This variation due to recombination of genes is part of what allows natural selection to take place.

But on its own, it is not enough. Our genes have been passed down through millions of generations, back to the earliest animals which walked on land, and the fish which came before them (and all the way back to the first living thing). And yet we are not fish! If genes are copied each generation, how can there be so many different species? Where do new genes come from to create new adaptations? The answer is mutation.

Very occasionally a gene mutates, due to copying errors, radiation, or other reasons. Usually this has no effect. Sometimes it is harmful, and the animal often dies before passing the gene on. However, on rare occasions the mutant gene is helpful - for example it may give a giraffe a longer neck. A mutation such as this is what allows natural selection to work.