This week, we’ve been discussing the history of life on Earth in UKS2 Science. First, the children were asked to order nine pictures from the earliest to most recent evolved life on Earth. This prompted some excellent theorising, questioning and reasoning. The children very maturely debated in their groups, listening and reacting to each other’s scientific ideas.
After discovering the correct order, we discussed why life evolved in this way and made links between stages. For example: why amphibians evolved AFTER land plants.
Then, we went into the playground and matched the pictures to parts of a scaled timeline of life on Earth. One organism didn’t even have a part of the timeline because it existed for so long before anything else evolved. Some children thought this would be humans; others thought it might be fish. It was pre-historic marine life! To fit the scale of our timeline, it would stretch from the playground to Blackheath Station!!
When we came inside, we recreated the correct timeline order and were shocked to discover that Homo Sapiens only took up a tiny sliver of history! (Only 200,000 years compared to the 3.6 billion years of simple marine life!)
