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Hello,
At our school we are struggling with low student scores and low student engagement in our biology classes. Our kids come in with very low reading comprehension skills and low confidence. We would like to move from our current content focused teaching model to a skills based model. We are planning our evolution unit now and are having a hard time identifying relevant skills as goals for our kids. Evolution, natural selection, geologic time scale, homologous structures the fossil record--lots of content here, but few graphs or specific skills to learn and practice.
Happy
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I am wondering if you are able to teach your students using real-life-application. If your students are struggling you may need to use examples of evolution using things in their everyday life that they are able to relate to.
Sherene A. McDonald
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Hi Sherene,
You are so right the kids really buy in better when there is a personal connection.
Since we can't see it happening, evolution is a very hard for lots of people. What would be a way to have them to relate to change over a long time, change that happens when some selective process picks some to survive and not others? I work in an inner city school with a mixed hispanic and Afroamerican population. Skin color is a pretty good example of evolution in action. Maybe I could start with that to get them seeing that this topic has a relevance to real life.
Happy
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by Harriet Smith, Wed Jan 19, 2011 8:27 PM
We would like to move from our current content focused teaching model to a skills based model. We are planning our evolution unit now and are having a hard time identifying relevant skills as goals for our kids.
Hi Happy,
I've also found that making the science content relevant really helps my students learn, understand, and retain the information that I teach. It's great to see that you're spearheading the initiative to move from content-based instruction to skills-based instruction at your school!
The February 2009 issue of The American Biology Teacher had a great article called 'A suggested project-based evolution unit for high school: teaching content through application' by Kristen Cook. The article details a hands-on high school evolution unit with hyperlinks to various websites and lesson resources. I've also attached a collection of skills-based evolution resources from the NSTA Learning Center. The 'Art and Evolution' article details how to combine art instruction with evolution instruction by discussing Merian, Darwin, and Wallace. The article 'Extreme Arthropods' helps students understand that form follows function and that environment drives evolution as they build their own arthropod. I also include NSTA's Evolution Toolkit (e-book is free for all NSTA members). This is a resource that I frequently use when I have questions about the best way to teach evolution. One chapter in particular that might help you is 'Active Evolution Instruction'. This chapter has several hands-on evolution activities. One final resource that has lots of great information is the PBS Evolution Teachers' Guide.
Best of Luck!
Maureen
Skills-based evolution Collection
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Hi, I teach a unit on Evolution with a focus on Darwin's Theory, Selective Breeding, and Natural Selection (Overproduction, Variations, and Competition). The scholars conduct a laboratory investigation on how species change over time (using white mouse and brown mouse cards)and they are required to predict and investigate the species chances of survival in various environments. To complicate matters, they also use 'event' cards that specifies if a mouse survives, a disease kills the mouse, a predator kills all mice, or a predator kills only mice that contrast with the environment. This skills lab is very interactive and the scholars love it.
Afterwards, we spend some time focusing on 'Interpreting Evidence of Evolution' (similarities in early development, fossils, and similarities in body structure), and 'Inferring Species Relationships' (similarities in DNA, combining evidence, and branching trees).
Finally, we discuss 'The Fossil Record', focusing on how fossils form, determining a fossil's age, and what fossils reveal.
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Hi Maureen,
Thanks for the wonderful resources. I have just spent around an hour exploring the suggestions you make. Thanks so much for gathering together your rescources and sharing them. From reading your materials, I am thinking the following skills will be important to teach in an evolution unit:
working with scale models (geologic time)
reading a cladogram or other kind of ancestry diagram
interpreting timelines
critical thinking
model making
reading comprehension
abstract thinking (imagining change over time)
distinguishing evidence from theory or explanation
I will be studying your resources for a while longer! Thanks!
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Hello,
Thanks Lorrie for sharing your experiences. The lab you describe below sounds very interesting. Could you share a link or your handouts. I am unable to access the Discovery link you provided in your post.
Happy
From Lorrie:
The scholars conduct a laboratory investigation on how species change over time (using white mouse and brown mouse cards)and they are required to predict and investigate the species chances of survival in various environments. To complicate matters, they also use 'event' cards that specifies if a mouse survives, a disease kills the mouse, a predator kills all mice, or a predator kills only mice that contrast with the environment. This skills lab is very interactive and the scholars love it.
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If you have access to Gizmos (on online resource) they have an activity where students have to try and find moths. When the trees are light it is difficult to find the white moths, but as the trees darken the students cannot find the dark moths. Each "generation" it keeps track of how many moths of each color survive. Students love it because it is like a video game, but they are understanding natural selection. Also, check out JASON.org, they have great activities and everything is free.
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Katherine,
That does sound like a great activity to do with students. Is Gizmo free? Or is there a similar link that students could use? Do you have a sheet that accompanies the website? It may be interesting to have students chart their own and then compile a list for the class.
Thanks
Liz
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Liz,
I think you might have to have a subscription to Gizmos. The IT at my school introduced me to it, but I think my district had bought a membership to it. I can find out for you tomorrow. I like your idea of the class sharing information. I just turned it into a competition at the SMARTBoard. Each student was a predator and they had 30 seconds to survive. We continually weeded down the people who did not survive to show the decreasing population of predators. I really like your idea though.
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Students and I are summarizing research articles (thanks Matt from the list) a due every Friday assignment. Students write a paragraph summary according to Matt's WIN format. I wrote a quickie on research done on Stickleback Fish. May I suggest a speciation approach to evolution. The ppt has a father/daughter theme as well as an evolutionary one. Insects are also fun,for example the gypsy moth story,weaver ant moved from the ground to the trees over time, James Earl Jones (Darth Vader) narrates for Discovery, Insects:The Little Things That Run the World" is my resource.
Steve
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Having had the opportunity to visit the Galapagos a couple of years ago, I was very interested in reading about how each of you at this discussion thread are teaching evolution concepts. Thanks for the great ideas and resources.
Thank you for sharing your ppt, Steve. One of the slides had a link to the U of California (Davis, CA) Geology Dept. There were loads of great links and information at that site. They are doing some amazing things to advance the study of earthquakes. I am going to post the site at the Quakes and Tsunami discussion thread.
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Another thing the students could do is read a National Geographic article about tracing human genetics out of Africa. It is interesting for the student to talk about where humans began and why certain recessive traits are dominant in different populations. I will try to find the article and post a link to it.
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Aloha Lorrie,in regards to your evolution unit.
I teach both special education 7th grade Life Science and 8th grade Earth/Space Science. Thank you for sharing "Life Science: Evolution Teacher's Guide". The fantasy environment on different planets will be introduced when my 7th grade students move to 8th grade. It will be a good way to have students use their prior knowledge of natural selection while thinking of life in space. It will be such a great way for them to use what they learned a year earlier. It's another way of reinforcing student learning.
Aloha,
Linda
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Aloha Harriet, regarding skills to teach in an evolution unit.
I want to share how I included a cultural aspect to my geological timeline activity. My students constructed an adding machine paper timeline, made a power point presentation of the geologic timeline then using the hawaiian creation chant "Kumulipo" they created another power point but using hawaiian words for the plants and animals. They learned hawaiian terms, used their prior knowledge to select pictures relevant to the hawaiian terms and they were surprised that the hawaiian terms could be used on their research. This activity provided my students with computer skills, research, and knowledge of the sequence of evolution.
Aloha,
Linda
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Hi Happy and thread readers,
There may be some activities and resources of interest to you at the other Evolution thread. I DID find something, Happy, at the Learning Center that could be useful as you search for ways to integrate process skills with evolution concepts. The book is for sale through the NSTA Press, and Chapter 2 is free to members of NSTA. The book, Adventures in Paleontology, has 36 fossil activities, 9 of which are embedded in the free chapter. The materials needed are minimal and inexpensive, and the hands-on, process skill-oriented activities provide students with practice measuring, inferring, analyzing, hypothesizing, constructing scale models, etc.
I hope this helps.
Carolyn
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