Our next project was our species timeline. In pairs we had to choose an organism and research it's ancestors. We had to find an early ancestor and several transitional species. We had to explain how natural and artificial selection played a role in the evolution of the species. Finally, we had to present our findings to the class in a formal presentation.
My partner and I chose to do our timeline on CORN!
For this project we learned about the following concepts: Evolution: The process through which organisms use advantageous mutations to slowly change into a species better suited for their environment. Transitional species: A species that is in the middle of the chain of species going through a large change. Such as transitioning from land to water. A transition species might have legs and fins. Common ancestor: A species that two or more species are evolved from.
Overall, I am pleased with the end results of this project. Me and my partner worked very well together. I knew I could trust him to get work done. The work was well split up unlike other projects where certain people have to do all the work. I felt we worked very diligently and was able to accomplish a lot in a short period of time. Like the cladogram project I was not happy with how we only got one work day every week or so. Unlike the cladogram, this project did not suffer from the disjointed work time most likely due to how well me and my partner work together. Our presentation was rehearsed which I view as a good things. Some comments we received was that our jokes seems forced and it sounded too perfect. Although I will take this into consideration, I will allay choose for my presentation to sound to perfect than for it to be disorganized. If a presentation is not practiced, important information might be left out. At the end of our presentation, we asked questions to the audience and gave out bags of kettle corn for correct answers. This was chaotic. In the future, I will just bring kettle corn for the entire class instead of giving it out as prizes. I still believe that even with its flaws, this was a very successful project.
Below is our slide show presentation
And here is our script that we used while presenting.