Lesson Plans

Lesson Plan

Students explore the origins of muscles, nerves, and animal adaptions through of study of the fascinating phylum Cnidaria.

Lesson Plan

A list of questions about the characteristics of Cnidarians to use after viewing the video Cnidarians: Life On the Move.Shape of Life Cnidarians Worksheet. Students make sketches and write short answers to questions about the amazing world of cnidarians. This worksheet was created by Rachel Miller from Science From Scratch.A Powerpoint with questions to answer while watching the video Cnidarians: Life on the Move.

Lesson Plan

Antoni Gaudi, the famous Spanish architect, found his inspirations from nature. From trees to light to whale bones, Gaudi used solutions from nature for structural support or decoration. He is not unique in using natural engineering to solve problems in our daily lives. In this lesson, we will investigate how, through the process of evolution, animals have solved their engineering problems and how people have mimicked those natural solutions.

Lesson Plan

After note taking during the phyla episodes of the shapeoflife.org, student pairs will randomly pick an invertebrate from the hat. After doing more in-depth research on their chosen invertebrate, student pairs will design and create a flyer that will promote the invertebrate’s special abilities. Furthermore, the students will find at least one video clip of their invertebrate from the shapeoflife.org website to present to the class as evidence of their claims. Finally the student pair will argue why their invertebrate should be crowned the “World’s Most Awesome Invertebrate.”

Lesson Plan

In this lesson students engage in the practice of science by observing behaviors using Shape of Life videos with the audio and closed captioning turned off.

Lesson Plan

In this activity students explore how animals are classified. For centuries taxonomists have been classifying the diversity of animal life based on observations and measurements of animals’ body plans. And now, with DNA sequencing, scientists have for the most part confirmed the work of earlier taxonomists. Students will learn the characteristics that define five of the major invertebrate phyla by watching videos, reading and sorting animal cards. The phyla are: Cnidarians, Annelids, Arthropods, Molluscs, and Echinoderms.