Evolution as a Story - Part 1

I love studying evolution.  There are many reasons for this, but one of the most compelling is that it is the story of how we, as humans, came to be.  It is a story of adaptation and extinction, success and failure, and if told correctly it can help students to a greater understanding of just how cool this whole evolution thing is.  I mean, we are related to fish and oak trees for crying out loud.  How cool is that?  I plan on writing about how I tell the story of our evolution in a future post or two, but for right now I'd like to share a few things I have made which help me tell this story to my classes.

First, I have a short textbook that I wrote for use in my Zoology class which focuses on the evolutionary story of the major groups of organisms including invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.  Each 4-6 page chapter deals with a particular group of animals and explains the main points of their evolution in what I hope is a humorous yet educational manner.  This book is available for sale as a digital download at my Teachers Pay Teachers store should you be interested.  There you can download a free sample to see what it is like as well as purchase either individual chapters or the entire textbook, should you feel so moved.  And because I am such a stand-up kinda guy, for a limited I am giving away the evolution chapter of my textbook for free!    

To supplement the textbook I put together graphic organizers for the chapters on Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals.  I give these out to the students so they can use them to take notes while we discuss these topics.  Click the links to go to my store to download free higher resolution copies of these organizers.  (The images below are just JPEGs because I am relatively new to blogger.com and haven't figured out if it is possible to link files to posts.)  

Finally, I have made Prezis which use the graphic organizers as the main focal point to help the students follow the story we are discussing.  The links to the Prezis are below.  If you are a regular user of Prezi, feel free to make a copy of these presentations for use in your classroom.  If you are not a regular user of Prezi, it is an amazing, free, online presentation tool that I can't recommend highly enough.

Reptile Evolution Prezi Link

Bird Evolution Prezi Link

Mammal Evolution Prezi Link