Liberty’s Science Wing Showcases Earth’s Geological and Biological History

Teacher collaboration lines the halls of Liberty. The 4000 wing of Liberty has been transformed as Geology, Zoology and AP Biology students work together to display a timeline of the earth’s history.

Mr. Warlick’s Geology students created informational posters and visuals to represent the changing of the continents through time. These included the formation of supercontinents and their eventual break up into what are the modern-day continents. Also included was information about the fossil record to provide evidence for the type of environment necessary to support those organisms. In addition, they included information on the 5 main mass extinction events that occurred throughout earth's history with an explanation of what caused each event, and which species went extinct. 

In Ms. Grant’s Zoology class, student groups were assigned a period to research. They researched which features first appeared during that period, and which animal groups. They also researched how the period started and ended and created a poster to capture this information. Each individual student chose an animal that represented one of the groups or features that first appeared in their period. They researched the fossil evidence of that species and created a museum display including a large image of what the animal may have looked like in life, as well as a museum label about the animal and it’s fossils.

Capitalizing on this great joint effort Ms. Stephen’s AP Biology also got in on the action. “In the hallway, 6 centimeters represented 1 million years, so this allowed my students to get some perspective on evolutionary time. This was a wow factor for their learning.  This allowed us to get a jump start on our evolution unit, which we don't usually get to until April” Stephens explains. Students used the timeline by adding events of biological significance, such as, when the events of the endosymbiont theory took place, when the first photosynthetic organisms lived on earth, where there was first available oxygen, first flowering plants, first insects, first birds, etc.