It is STEAM Week and this whole term year 6 will be exploring these linked strands of learning – Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths – through their topic Who I Am.

On the last day of half term year 6 ventured to the Natural History Museum on a mission to unpick Evolution.

What is Evolution? Why does evolution take place? How does evolution happen?

The children were set the challenge to discover what animals, plants and conditional environments were present along different time scales within the evolution of our planet. We realised that at the beginning there was only ocean, then gradually there was land and creatures until eventually things we know as normal (like humans) appeared – we noticed that dinosaurs became extinct and that humans are relatively recent species. Evolution is the changes within living creatures or plants over time.

Then we were shown the fossil of an animal and told it lived in a mossy area. We had to think about how is features helped it live within its environment – why would it have webbed feet?

The children were then set on the task to match the evolutionary changes of the creature to the changes of its environment and soon realised … it was a horse! So creatures adapt to fit the environment they live in.

Finally we learnt evolution happens through inheritance (passing on genes to offspring). Watch the video to see how this was demonstrated:

Now the children are creating their very own survivors, writing biographies about pioneers within the field and creating mythical stories about the original of adaptation changes – watch this space for all the work to come!