Adaptation Lesson
Chris Wickens
Overview/motivation for the lesson
This lesson introduces the concept of evolutionary adaptation by showing how the kids' favorite
animals fit in with their environments.
Goals
The kids should understand that animals have different features so that they can survive in their habitat.
The animal adapts to the habitat, not vice versa.
Vocabulary

Adaptation

Habitat

Survival

Evolution
Materials:

Paper (we bring it in; the rest the kids should have)

Pencil

Crayons

Markers
Intro:
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Go around the class and ask everybody for their favorite animal. Say “let's see who comes up
with”:

The biggest animal

The smallest animal

The most dangerous animal

The cutest animal

Write each one down on the board.
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After you've gone around the class, look at the animals on the board and find the biggest,
smallest, etc.. Remark how they're all so different!

Ask: why do animals all look different?

Ask the kids for their thoughts. If the question is too abstract for them, use a specific animal as
an example.

e.g. “Mike says he likes giraffes. What do you guys think is the coolest thing about giraffes?
[Their long necks!] Yeah, their long necks are really cool. Why would an animal have a
long neck? [See if anyone knows.] OK, let's think about what giraffes eat. Does anybody
know? Giraffes eat the leaves off of trees. But sometimes the leaves are really high up in the
tree and hard to reach. Now does anybody know why a long neck would help?”

Introduce the concept of adaptation. Animals look different because they live in different
habitats and have to fit in to survive.

Illustrate this interactively.

Ask the kids to point out interesting things about each of the animals on the board. Use
Q&A to show what you can tell about an animal and its habitat from its features

Examples:

Fur => keep animal warm in a cold habitat

Eyes on side of head => prey; eyes in front => predator (why?)

Fast runner => outrun predators

Hard shell (e.g. clam/crab) => protection against predators
Game/Experiment:
The kids draw an animal of their own! Either individually or in groups of two, the kids choose a habitat
(can be anything, even outer space). Then, we tell them they have to draw an animal that is adapted to
that habitat. For example, we will have some children draw animals living in the desert, while others
will draw an animal living in the Arctic ocean, etc. They don't have to use normal animal body parts;
anything goes. We will than look at the drawings and ask the students why they gave their creature the
features they did. Lead this into a general discussion of how adaptation works. (For the younger kids,
it's not necessary to get into evolutionary dynamics like survival rates, random mutation, etc.)
Q&A
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Are human beings animals?
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What's special about us?

Opposable thumbs

Upright walkers

Big brains

What happens if you take an animal out of its habitat?

Time permitting, introduce the concept of evolution and natural selection. “The animals
weren't always this way; for example, giraffes only got long necks after a very long time.”