Modeling Animal Adaptations

In this skill-building lesson, students will learn to create and animate sprites and use events to make them interactive.

Students will code an event-based cause-and-effect model in Sprite Lab to demonstrate how species survive by adapting to their environments over time. Interactive models and simulations are used in the real world to help engineers and scientists identify patterns, understand nature, make predictions about future changes, and design solutions to prepare for and/or combat major disruptions.

Students will explore examples of evolution, adaptation, migration, natural selection, and survival in groups.

In this CS and science-integrated lesson, students will use behaviors in computer science to represent animal survival behaviors. When students use behaviors in Sprite Lab, they are giving their sprite a set of instructions to execute over and over like an animation. First, students will try out different pre-defined behaviors, including migratory patterns for whales and butterflies, bird dances used to attract a mate, and fish traveling in groups. Then, students will practice modifying and coding their own animal behaviors.

In this CS and science-integrated lesson, students will learn how to edit animal behaviors in code. First, students will make a prediction about a fox’s mystery behavior. Then, in the following levels they will use the “edit” button to debug different animal behaviors, including speed, direction, and rotation style. Finally, students will choose an environmental change scenario and use their own creative code to model a new & unique animal adaptation!

At the end of class, students will share out their custom projects with their classmates. Students will have a chance to reflect on what they have learned about behaviors in code and animal behaviors in real life.