3D tree of life for teaching kids about evolution January 12, 2006
Posted by lmhartley in : Science , comments closed
“If you want to show young children how their favorite animals (e.g., cats, dogs, horses) share a common ancestor, ask them to bring in plastic animals from different species (e.g., house cat, lion, tiger), and attach them to different branches of a “tree of life”. Precede this lesson plan with a trip to the library, so that you know which species they need to collect at home (the safari phase), and which species they might need to just draw (or make out of clay).”
C Purrin
The designer of this display is a associate professor of Evolutionary Biologywho lives and works in the US where teaching evolution is a bit more of a hot potato than in the UK. Hr’s posted ideas about teaching evolution in school extensively on Flickr and talks about it on his web pages too.
“The majority of Americans don’t accept a natural origin of life, a nonhuman ancestry for humans, or that species continue to evolve today through non-magical processes such as natural selection. This faith in supernatural explanations is maintained by indoctrination of young children by parents, but facilitated by weak biology instruction at public schools, where evolution is rarely portrayed as the unifying principle in biology. To effectively educate children about life, therefore, science standards must be readjusted so that exposure to evolution is commenced in kindergarten, when it might better counteract the fictional creation mythologies that kids are being taught at home. Waiting until middle school or high school to teach evolution is, as polls show, “not so effective.”
sound-display January 4, 2006
Posted by lmhartley in : Science , comments closed
Andy wrote:
A year 5 interactive display for science topic “sound” including instruments. I tuned the guitar and discovered it’s perfectly playable, and the accoustics in the empty classroom were great.
Seeing this image on Flickr last year inspired my then year 5 teacher to get me to make a version of our own which I then posted to the group.
It included milk bottles with actual water - we were feeling brave. This interactive classroom display stayed up for weeks and no spills!
