Animal Adaptation Pyramids

This is a fun, hands-on building activity that allows each student express themselves and what they learned in a structured manner. The objective is for the students to become familiar with the concept of form-fits-function. Each student chooses an animal off of a list. It is better to have a list for two reasons. First, it forces the students to choose animals that are outside of their current realm of knowledge. Secondly, before placing an animal on the list I checked to see if there was readily accessible information available on the internet about each animal. Once each student has an animal choosen, they can begin to do research and build their pyramids. The sides of the pyramid, there are five including the bottom, are to be decorated and filled with information about the "forms" that each animal has and what these forms function to help the animal survive. For example, an elephant has tusks to help defend themselves so, one side of the pyramid would have a picture of tusks and a description of how the elephant uses them for defense. Each student was given a instruction sheet/self-evaluation to help guide them through the project.