Brainstorming Activity

Divide students into teams (these can include any number of students).

Begin by asking your student teams to compare one of the following pairs (follow this link to a pairs sheet that can be printed, cut up and randomly distributed or picked from a hat):

• Dolphins and seals
• Butterflies and crickets
• Tigers and domestic cats
• Goldfish and sharks
• Snails and lobsters
• Oak trees and horses
• Lizards and chickens
• Roses and apple trees
• Jellyfish and sea stars
• Earthworms and gorillas
• Paramecia and salamanders

Ask the students to list as many features as they can think of that their two organisms have in common.

Ask questions:

• Do their organisms share features because they were inherited from the same ancestor, or did their organisms evolve similar features independently?
  
  
• What other features could be used as a basis for comparison?
  
  
• Do they think their organisms are closely related to each other? Why or why not?

Now that they are comfortable with comparing two organisms, ask them to use this same process to think about how all living things might be related.

Student teams brainstorm ideas for the following:

1. What we know about how living things are related.
   Example: All mammals are more closely related to each other than any of them are to something like an insect. However, insects are also animals, so that makes them at least distantly related to mammals.
   
   
2. What we think we know about how living things are related, but are not sure about.
   Example: We think that animals are related to bacteria.
   
   
3. What we want to know about how living things are related.
   Example: How can you tell which organism is related to which? Are plants and animals related? If animals and bacteria are related, how does that work? Are mushrooms more closely related to plants or animals?

The class then comes back together to share, discuss, and record their ideas onto a single large sheet of paper.