Teach First Planning

Proforma
Planning Proforma
Date: 18/11/21 Class: 9A1 Unit of
work/Topic:
Variation and
inheritance
Big Picture:
Where does this teaching episode fit within the scheme of work/topic? What do the pupils already know/understand
about the learning being taught in this lesson?

Evolution part 1
This is the first lesson on evolution where students will link natural selection to the theory of evolution. They will
learn that natural selection is what drives evolution. As well as learning about Charles Darwin and ‘his’ finches.
Students already have knowledge of natural selection and variation.

Misconception: Evolution produces living things perfectly adapted environment

TLAC - Begin with the End

Lesson Objective: Assessment: Activity:
What do you want your pupils to know / be What will you ask your pupils to do to demonstrate their What
able to do at the end of the lesson? learning? activities are
Evolution Students will be able to explain how evolution is the pupils
LOs result of species changing over a long period of time engaging with
throughout
They will be able to explain how natural selection is the the lesson to
Be able to explain what evolution is driving force of evolution. progress their
learning
Describe how evolution occurs Explain how changes in organisms in response to towards the
environmental change supports Darwin’s theory of objective?
evolution by natural selection. Reading task
to begin with
based on
Darwin’s
finches.

Talking point:
Why have
humans not
evolved to
breathe
underwater?

Exam
questions
based on the
evolution of

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 horses foot
bones in
response to
environemtna
l change.

Preparation
(To be completed before the lesson)
Resources: Key vocabulary
for the lesson:
Print out of reading task: Darwin’s Finches Consider how
will introduce
Exam question: Horse Evolution this and
where you
will reinforce
it. Does it
need to be
displayed
anywhere in
the room?
Evolution
Adaptation
Environment
Natural
selection
Species
Variation

Additional Adult Role:

What role will an additional adult play if available?
Year 9 TA circulates year 9 classes, checks on individual students who require SEND support, does not give assistance to
whole class only those assigned to.

Timing Teacher Pupil

Do now: Reading task Darwin’s Finches What will the
pupils be
Students will read quietly the Galapagos finches reading task answering questions based doing/thinking
off their comprehension. at each stage of
the teaching
I will then ask students to feedback to me their answers, I will ask for hands up but make episode?
sure that I try to get a range of answers from high, middle and low attaining students. Students are
now being
introduced to
evolution, but
they have strong
knowledge on
natural selection
based off of the
previous two
lessons. They
understand that

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 if an
environment
changes then
those individuals
in a species that
are most suited
to that change
will survive and
reproduce.

They should feel

comfortable
answering the
questions based
off the reading.
Some of the
lower attaining
students/ SEND
students may
struggle to pick
out key
information but
the seating plan
places them next
to someone with
a high reading
age so some
support should
be provided by
the person next
to them and
myself as I float
around the
classroom
checking for
comprehension.

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Check What will you do to check for understanding?
I will then ask students to feedback to me their answers, I will ask for hands
up but make sure that I try to get a range of answers from high, middle and
low attaining students.

Introduction: (Present material in small steps) Students are well versed in

talking points.
Talking point: Why have humans not evolved to breathe underwater? They should be comfortable
in discussing new ideas with
The misconception being challenged in this lesson is that evolution produces their peers.
perfect organisms. If this were true then humans would’ve evolved to
breathe underwater instead of needing ships or submarines. They will most likely wonder
why humans haven’t
I will ask the class to talk in pairs and then we will discuss a class. attempted to go back into
the water in response to
I am hoping that in response to some answers I will be able to ask probing rising sea levels. They will
questions such as “are sharks perfectly adapted to their environment” or “ also consider why variation
why haven’t some human populations grown fur to live further north or in humans hasn’t resulted in
evolved to live in the desert”. a singular human with some
form of gill or advantage
I expect some responses to be: that makes them better at
“They haven’t needed to yet” living in the water than land.
Or “they haven’t tried”

Check
(Ask assessment questions to gather understanding from all pupils)

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 Provide Model: (Guide through practising the model and thinking aloud) The students
Students start with a short introduction to evolution. should be able
It states how Darwin first proposed the theory of evolution and the theory of natural to comfortably
selection drives evolutionary change. link how natural
selection is a
To affirm this, the students will now watch a video on the evolution and variation in driver of
lemurs on Madagascar, specifically looking at the evolution of their long middle fingers. evolution.
During this time the students must answer the two questions. During the video
• 1. What is evolution driven by? the students
• 2. What lengthened the middle finger of the lemur thousands of years ago? should be able
to comfortably
The teaching method to eliminate the misconception for this lesson is using an analogy. answer the
The analogy is that of rats and provides an explanation on how natural selection drives questions
evolution: relating to the
• Imagine a group of rats. A small portion of them are isolated from the rest. These video. The
rats are in a colder environment from before, but they survive. Their fur gets lemur video
longer, their claws larger and flatter. They begin to store more fat and become explains
whiter in coloration. These are the favourable traits in children, so those offspring evolution very
can reproduce more. well whilst
• Meanwhile, the other rats are in the same environment. They undergo little giving the
change, as they need less changes for their environment. When joined back with students an
the other rats, they will not breed. They are either too different, or they do not interesting
see each other as the same species. concrete
example they
can draw from
when answering
questions.

The analogy
provides a
simple way to
view evolution
and explains
nicely how that
it results in two
separate
species. The
combination of
the video and
analogy should
not provide
strain on their
cognitive load;
therefore they
shouldn’t feel
overwhelmed
when answering
exam questions.

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Check (Check for understanding before the activity and obtain a high success rate)
To check for understanding I will quickly cold call two students to answer the questions from the video. The
students should all be able to answer those questions.

Following the analogy, I will ask for students to show either RED, AMBER or GREEN cards to show if they are
understanding evolution thus far. Following the feedback, I will either re visit evolution and go through
deeper or set students off on an exam question and go to students who have shown RED or AMBER
depending on the response.

Pupil Practise: Most students

How will you scaffold the learning so that all your pupils achieve the lesson objective? should be able
Horse evolution exam question to complete the
Students need to use their knowledge of evolution and natural selection and apply to a exam Q’s with
horse’s foot evolving due to changes in their environment. the knowledge
This helps eliminate the misconception as it shows that evolution can happen multiple from today’s
times and still not produce the perfect end product. lesson and the
previous 2.
The students are
familiar with
having to
answer an exam
Q towards the
end of the
lesson.
They will be
thinking about
how horses used
to look
compared to the
ones they see
today.

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Check (Monitor practise and independent practise)
Following students answering the questions I will put them on the board and cold call
students for their answers, if students are close with their answer, I will ask for hands up for
students to help expand on answers to reach the perfect one that achieves all marks.

Review of Learning: (Assessment of pupil knowledge) Students should

E.g.: TLAC -: Exit Ticket feel comfortable
The final part of the lesson is an quickly firing off

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 exit ticket composed on 2 quick fire 2-word answers
questions which I will cold call at to these
least 3 students per questions with questions. I am
the questions being: cold calling at
• What drives evolution? least 3 students
• Who proposed the theory to make sure
of natural selection? the whole class
Following this, student must is listening and
hold their hands up showing 1- there is no
5, which shows how much they confusion in the
have understood the lesson, 1 answers to
= everything, 5 = nothing. these two
questions.
Students may
be surprised to
see me asking
for 1-5 as it is
normally
GREEN, AMBER
and RED but I
am aiming for
students to give
me an honest
answer and not
try to copy
other students.

Check (Gather assessment data linked to objective)

I am aiming to see most of the students with either 1 or 2 shown. This will give me an idea of the prevalence of
the misconception still. If students are holding up 4-5 then I know they may still hold misconceptions on
evolution and may need extra time set aside for them next lesson to be checked upon.

Evaluation
(To be complete after the lesson)
Pupil Progress: Pupils progressed well throughout the lesson, they completed all the tasks. They especially enjoyed the
video.

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Answer from one of the students, showing their comprehension of the horse questions on evolution.

Implications for future learning: I would carefully pick which lessons require analogies and which don’t. The analogy for
this lesson felt week and I am unsure on what impact it had on the students. I feel that it was more of a concrete
example, however if I wanted to use a concrete example, I would’ve added a diagram.

Reflection
What aspects of the teaching episode were successful?
Strengths and achievements are important to celebrate and should be
discussed. How did the class respond to the session?
The best parts of the lesson were the reading task at the beginning of the
lesson and the video on lemurs. The reading task is based off of Darwin’s
finches and many students have heard of this before. Students were very
excited about the lemur video as they found them ‘cute’ and ‘funny’ so I
feel that engaged them more with the task and grabbed their attention.

What are your action points for your next teaching episode?
Identifying significant actions that lead to strategies that may change, develop or refine practice.

Videos were very helpful; they allowed the students to take almost a break from teacher talk and allowed their
minds to just watch and listen whilst having to answer two simple questions. I believe that a good idea is to
introduce a video that students must formulate an opinion on after they have finished watching and then use that as
a point of discussion.

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