Blast From the Past: Fun With Fossils

Funded Nov 28, 2022

My students and I are so grateful for the opportunity to interact with real life fossils thanks to your very generous donations of "Fossil Display Packs" and the "Know Your Fossils Collection Sets." In the unit 'How life has changed over time,' we track how the planet stabilized and changed over 4.6 billion years. In that process new environments and habitats become available for organisms to spring to life and populate. It is crucial that students can map out how life responds to environmental pressure and changes that develop on Earth. This is exactly how we used the donated fossils. You can see kids viewing fossils under a stereoscopes hooked to their computers so they can get a closer look into past life.

This unit begins by mathematically scaling geologic time on a clothesline. Students use this 4.6 billion year timeline to place 'Earth' events and 'life' events as they see fit during the first exposure. Over a series of lessons we revisit the class timeline and reevaluate placements of events as they get more information. They realize that as the Earth opens up new environments and habitats for life to populate. We look at the past life through the use of your donated fossils and predict where in time different organisms lived based on their characteristics and the conditions on Earth at those times. Students learn how life evolved over time as environments changed. During these sequences they discover not only what life looked like, but how it changed over time, and what drives that change.

It is not until students can get their hands and eyes on actual fossils that they begin to understand the connectivity between the process of Evolution by Natural Selection and the continually changing environmental conditions on Earth. The next lesson sequences move into lab work that models differing global temperatures, Carbon Dioxide and Oxygen levels, sea level variations, and even ocean acidification. This allows us to bring out the fossils again and discuss what types of life might be more susceptible to these changes over time. Thank you so much again, you have enriched our classroom!”

With gratitude,

Mr. Miller