Evolving Minds: Teaching natural selection in third grade classrooms (2023)

Description

Evolution by natural selection is fundamental to understanding life, yet it is difficult to grasp because it is deeply counterintuitive. If we start early when students haven’t developed certain habits of mind, it’s easier to lay the foundation for them to understand natural selection. We have designed a 12-lesson unit and are testing it in four Massachusetts districts. Students show significant gains in grasping the mechanism of natural selection.

For more information about the curriculum: https://www.evolvingmindsproject.org/

NSF Award: 2009176

Discussion

This discussion took place during the TERC Video Showcase Event Nov. 14-21, 2023. Discussion is now closed.

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Gillian Puttick

November 13, 2023 2:33 pm

Now in its third year of design and implementation in 3rd grade classrooms in three Massachusetts districts, the Evolving Minds team has grappled with several interesting design constraints. What kinds of evidence do third graders need to draw on to build an understanding of natural selection? What evidence can be accessible through direct observation and measurement? And how can students evaluate the evidence against the theory – or model – of natural selection in successive new cases? Through collecting data from observation of real organisms with gleaning change over time narratives from storybook animations, we find that students successfully assemble an understanding of the mechanism of natural selection. As far as we know, Evolving Minds is the only rigorously designed evidence-based unit that is available for 3rd grade. Given that adaptation is an important component of the NGSS that 3rd grade teachers are expected to address, we paid particular attention to creating sufficient supports for teachers to teach the curriculum effectively. – teachers have all told us that they find the materials educative and easy to use. We’re interested in hearing from elementary teachers who have taken on challenging content – and from designers who have designed such curricula!

Jillian Ives

November 15, 2023 8:02 am

Reply to Gillian Puttick

Wonderful video. I really like the focus on developing habits of mind and evaluating evidence earlier. I wonder what habits of mind students develop that make it difficult to grasp later on, as referenced. Are there narratives presented in school that make it counterintuitive or is it mostly out-of-school narratives about evolution?

Gillian Puttick

November 15, 2023 11:20 am

Reply to Jillian Ives

Great question Jillian. There are some in-school narratives about adaptation – hummingbirds have long mouthparts so they can reach into tube-shaped flowers – that imply a teleological explanation of the adaptation, that is, hummingbirds need that feature so they get it. The canonical one is giraffes developing long necks so they can reach leaves in trees. In addition, children build intuitive understandings from out-of-school experiences and these lay a groundwork of preconceptions too – for example, that all the individuals in a species are the same, and unchanging.

Jillian Ives

November 16, 2023 8:26 am

Reply to Gillian Puttick

Thanks for the examples! The emphasis on sense-making and narratives reminds me of this article on how teachers can use what we label as misconceptions to help science sense-making: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ac64927ec4eb777b6e55402/t/5adba3cb70a6ad1da85dac49/1524343755330/Campbell+Schwartz+Windschitl+Misconceptions+Science+and+Children.pdf

Gillian Puttick

November 17, 2023 1:30 pm

Reply to Jillian Ives

Totally agree with these authors, Jillian. We call them “preconceptions” to indicate ideas that students bring to the classroom rather than labeling them as misconceptions with their connotation of being wrong and therefore needing correction. Preconceptions are totally assets that be built upon!

Kathryn Hobbs

November 14, 2023 4:45 pm

As a former HS biology teacher, I am so excited to hear about the work of this project! There is so much opportunity to teach so much more in elementary school around concepts like evolution and natural selection (and other biology concepts!) as it could have such important impact – as well as create interest and excitement for the students!
Has it been difficult to get buy in from the teachers or administrators? As I watched my own kids went through MA public schools (10ish years ago), I found so much emphasis at that level to be focused on reading and math, especially with the pressures of MCAS, etc. To me, these can and should all go together to help students learn all of the above!

Gillian Puttick

November 15, 2023 11:26 am

Reply to Kathryn Hobbs

Yes, we agree Kathryn, the elementary landscape can be challenging in the ways you mention. We have a different experience in the four districts we’ve worked in. One of the districts was recruited before the current project when the BU team introduced the storybooks. In a second district, we found teachers who were eager to get some good science materials and so signed on enthusiastically. Then in the third and fourth, through prior professional contacts administrators were instrumental in recruiting teachers. We hope that dissemination beyond these districts will go as well!

Deb Kelemen

November 15, 2023 11:32 am

We look forward to connecting with educators and researchers who are interested in learning more about the curriculum. Students lay an enduring foundation for understanding biological evolution and related life science concepts. We also find that learning some of these ideas has broader implications, for example, in promoting environmental concern. We hope that many many school districts and students can benefit from the Evolving Minds Project curriculum in the future! Check out https://www.evolvingmindsproject.org

Stephen Alkins

November 15, 2023 2:30 pm

I appreciate the illustrative timeline of how adaptation takes place. I only recall adaptation as having a cursory explanation; it was simply something that happens over multiple generations, without understanding/or visually representing this process. I am curious of how this unit (based on the high level of visuals and storytelling) supports and may better support multilingual learners and, perhaps, multilingual learners with disabilities.

Gillian Puttick

November 16, 2023 5:30 pm

Reply to Stephen Alkins

Hi Stephen – thanks! We paid very close attention to the kinds of representations and activities that support multilingual learners. As you observed, the curriculum values student talk and storytelling. We chose organisms, e.g., squirrels, snails, radishes, that students may encounter in their everyday lives.

Brian Drayton

November 21, 2023 5:26 am

This curriculum looks great, but the video makes me wonder how it fits in children’s subsequent thinking about the natural world .

I am curious about any evidence of persistence in learning among the kids using this curriculum? I have long assumed as a working hypothesis that learning about evolution should be grounded in some acquaintance with the problems that gave rise to the theory in the first place (variation, biodiversity, biogeography, apparent adaptations, and so on). Some acquaintance with these problems is what makes natural selection such an exciting and elegant way of thinking

(And it’s no secret that “natural selection” has been used in many different contexts since the late 1800s, often largely as a metaphor (from social darwinism to some theories of cosmology, neural development etc).

Nuria Jaumot-Pascual

November 21, 2023 10:18 am

I would have loved to learn about evolution this way!
I noticed that the video mentions the use of story books. Are these books that have been developed specifically for these lessons? How are they integrated into the classroom activities?

Jim Hammerman

November 21, 2023 1:39 pm

This is such rich and interesting work and seems well designed to capture the curiosity of “evolving minds”. In the Life on Earth natural history museum exhibit project, we tried to get at how separating a group into subpopulations long enough could create a new “branch” on the Tree of Life through the interactive “FloTree” experience, but it was pretty abstract. I’ll bet it would be nicely complemented with the specific, hands on work you’re describing here. Still, those abstractions are tricky. I’m curious how students do at understanding the aggregate population level issues after working with your materials?

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