Science Task Prescreen
Task Title: Natural Selection & Adaptation: How Populations Change Over Time
Grade: High School
Date: 2024-06-01
SEP: Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions
DCI: LS4.B (Natural Selection), LS4.C (Adaptation)
CCC: Cause and Effect
Task Purpose: Guide students through an investigation using an interactive simulation of a population under environmental pressure. Students observe how variation within a population, differential survival, and heritability lead to changes in trait distribution over generations — the core mechanism of natural selection and adaptation, aligned to HS-LS4-4.
Instructions
- Before you begin: Complete the task as a student would. Then, consider any support materials provided to teachers or students, such as contextual information about the task and answer keys/rubrics.
- Prescreen: Answer the following high-level questions to identify any major red flags (🚩) in your task. If you find one or more red flags, consider the purpose of the task and the evidence gathered to determine whether the task warrants a deeper dive.
Prescreen Questionnaire
| Question | Yes | No |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Is there a phenomenon or problem driving the task? | [x] | [ ] 🚩 |
| 2. Can the majority of the task be answered without using information provided by the task scenario? | [ ] 🚩 | [x] |
| 3. Can significant portions of the task be answered successfully by using rote knowledge (e.g., definitions, prescriptive or memorized procedure)? | [ ] 🚩 | [x] |
| 4. Does the majority of the task require students to use reasoning to successfully complete the task? | [x] | [ ] 🚩 |
| 5. Does the task require students to use some understanding of disciplinary core ideas to successfully complete the task? | [x] | [ ] 🚩 |
| 6. Do students have to use at least one science and engineering practice to successfully complete the task? | [x] | [ ] 🚩 |
| 7. Are the dimensions assessed separately in the majority of the task? | [ ] 🚩 | [x] |
| 8. Is the task coherent and comprehensible from the student perspective? | [x] | [ ] 🚩 |
Recommendation
Based on your assessment needs and the task purpose recorded above, make a recommendation about this task moving forward (choose one):
- [x] Warrants further review.
- [ ] Should not be used.
Summary
Summarize your evidence and reasoning:
This task uses the well-established phenomenon of the peppered moth (or a similar trait-frequency change) to drive student inquiry into how populations adapt over time. Students manipulate environmental variables in an interactive simulation and observe how differential survival rates shift the distribution of traits across multiple generations. The three dimensions are integrated: students construct explanations (SEP) for how cause-and-effect relationships (CCC) between environmental pressures and trait frequencies demonstrate natural selection and adaptation (DCI LS4.B, LS4.C).