KS3 & KS4 science curriculum

This unit builds on pupils’ prior learning from Adaptations, competition, natural selection and evolution, where they explored how organisms adapt and evolve based on environmental pressures. It deepens their understanding by focusing on fossil evidence and selective breeding, illustrating how these processes provide insight into evolutionary change over time. This prepares pupils for the next unit, Variation and natural selection at the genetic level, where they will explore the genetic mechanisms driving evolution, reinforcing their understanding of evolutionary biology.

1. The fossil record provides evidence for evolution
2. Common ancestors and transitional species
3. Selective breeding and human food security
4. Darwin, Wallace and the theory of evolution by natural selection
5. The evolution of new species
6. Climate change and evolution

• Fossils provide evidence about organisms that lived and died from 10,000 to billions of years ago and their habitats.
• Fossils show that the features of some species have changed over time.
• Species have adaptations which make them well suited to survive in their environment.
• Due to variation, some individuals within a species have features that make them better adapted to complete and survive in their environment.
• Better adapted individuals are more likely to reproduce and pass heritable adaptations (caused by genetic variation) on to the next generation.
• This ‘natural selection’ of better adapted individuals causes advantageous features to become more common in each generation of offspring.
• Natural selection can cause the common features of a species to change (evolve) over generations.