Evolution

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= **Are you Red or Blue? - Lamarck or Darwin?** = (Identifying Student Misconceptions)

Level: 9th - College
BACKGROUND:

The following is an activity that is appropriate for opening the discussion on Natural Selection (although it can be probably used at any step in the instruction). As implied by it's title "Are you Red or Blue? - Lamarck or Darwin?", this activity asks students to take a stand on a series of questions, all of which aim to show the students that the Darwinian approach makes more sense, especially after they have learned some genetics. Besides the mind exercise for the students, their votes can be counted, summarized and later on analyzed. Below you will find more details about the activity, as it was explained to members of the NSTA Biology Listerve. If you have any questions, please feel free to email the creator of this activity, Michal Kreiselman michalkreiselman@gmail.com.

THE ACTIVITY:


 * 1) I was asked what grade level this can be used with. Well, I did it with my 10th graders, and I think it would work best after students already studied genetics and gene expression. But other than that it would be interesting to try with any age, 9-10th grade through college. I tried it before barely teaching anything in the unit of evolution. I only introduced the unit with the PBS-evolution write around, where they respond to various statements or questions, but with not much input from me. For example, I did not define or introduce Darwin nor natural selection
 * 2) Some people asked me to repeat the description of the exercise, so I am writing it here as well:
 * 3) As a warm-up / journal students see the first two slides (I have two screens) - a camouflaged frog and the first red/blue pair. They needs to chose one and explain their reasoning.
 * 4) I give out blue and red papers, each student having the two colors in hand. At this point I tell the students that we are about to do a little experiment and they, the students, are the subject (some liked the idea, others showed discomfort).
 * 5) We go slide by slide - giving a minute or less to respond, and each time students raise either the red or the blue note, according to the explanation they think is best. As we go on I write the votes on a transparency.
 * 6) In the end, we looked at the results, and I tell them, by moving to the next slide, that they were in fact voting for Lamarck or for Darwin. On the same slide as you can see, I wrote abbreviated version of the two approaches. When I get there, I expect students to write down the two theories. And here I finally explain to them why we did this - That what they learned about adaptations and natural selection in middle school, lead them to explain evolution like Lamarck did. But now, that they learned genetics they can see it just doesn't make sense. Yet, the tendency to use Lamarck (it needed it to it gained it)is very strong, and we must work to settle the contradiction.

In the powerpoint I also added a few slides I once prepared for comparing Lamarck and Darwin, the ones with the crab, but I didn't use them this time around, to leave lesson time for the second activity that day.

That's it. It took some 20 minutes of lesson time, after which I had half a period to try out the biologyinmotion.com simulation of natural selection.

If you decide to use it, I would really appreciate it if you send me back your results with the following information: Once I get significant numbers from all of us, I don't mind putting it all in an excel chart and share. Then we can discuss students misconceptions and how we break them.
 * Age group of your students, and/or course you teach
 * The voting results per question - in counts (not percentage)
 * Any other detail you think is relevant (timing in your evolution unit? Student reaction?)

- Last but not least - if you have ideas on how to modify and improve the activity - please share!

Michal Kreiselman, Ph.D. Biology Teacher Kennedy High-School Granada Hills, CA - Sample Class Results (erase the data and fill in your own for your own individualized results)

="The Cytochrome C" Lab= Molecular Biology & Phylogency

@http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/mol.bio.html

=Making Cladograms= Phylogeny, Evolution & Comparative Anatomy

@http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/mclad.html

=Other Resources= Phylogeny Wing @http://ucmp.berkeley.edu/exhibit/phylogeny.html

Phylogenetic Systematics @http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/phylogenetics_01