Common ancestry and biological evolution come into focus in this Grade 6 science worksheet on unity and diversity. Students examine how homologous structures, conserved DNA sequences, vestigial organs, morphological gradients, and phylogenetic trees provide evidence for relationships among organisms and changes across generations.

What Students Explore

The resource develops evidence-based reasoning around common ancestry rather than treating evolution as a list of vocabulary terms. Students explain how similarities in structures and conserved DNA sequences can support shared ancestry, use phylogenetic trees to describe divergence among related taxa over generations, and interpret vestigial organs and morphological gradients as clues about ancestral traits.

Students work through multiple-choice questions, true-or-false statements, short-answer responses, a dialogue, a matching activity, a cloze passage, a labeled diagram, a reading passage, and an essay. The variety gives students opportunities to recognize evidence, interpret representations, explain scientific ideas, and communicate their reasoning in different ways.

What the Teacher Receives

• Worksheet covering biological evolution, unity and diversity, and evidence for common ancestry
• Separate PDF answer key for checking student responses
• Separate PDF teacher guide with learning objectives, teaching tips, discussion questions, and common mistakes

Flexible Classroom Use

Use this Grade 6 evolution worksheet for science practice, lesson reinforcement, independent work, review, or assessment. The teacher guide provides practical support for introducing the concepts, guiding classroom discussion, and addressing common misconceptions while students work with evidence for evolutionary relationships.

Because students encounter both selected-response and constructed-response tasks, the resource can support classroom instruction while giving teachers multiple ways to see how well students can interpret evidence and explain the relationship between present-day characteristics and ancestral traits.

NGSS Connection

This resource is designed within the NGSS framework and focuses specifically on biological evolution, unity and diversity, and evidence that can be used to reason about common ancestry and divergence among related taxa.