SESSION 7:How Can You Use Active Learning to Teach Evolution?
Facilitator Notes for SESSION 7
Explore Part A Note 1: Encourage participants to share their ideas around these issues. The act of
changing a noninquiry activity to an inquiry-based one could be especially instructive.
Ask participants to share their activities with one another. You may want to have them do
peer reviews in pairs.
Explore Part B Note 2: You should encourage participants to discuss their own experiences with
using simulations in their classes as well.
Explain Part A Note 3: Have participants share their own strategies for questioning as well as an
analysis of the video teacher's.
Explain Part B Note 4: Ms. Havlik gave students an article on genetic diseases a few days prior to
the activity. The article on sickle cell anemia
demonstrated how population genetics relates to people's lives. Ms. Chen had taught
mutations and protein synthesis prior to this activity. She had students apply this prior
knowledge to the wading bird simulation.
Explain Part C Note 5: Encourage teachers to do the exercise around evaluating Web resources. This
will help them guide their own students' productivity and accuracy during Web research.
Elaborate Part A Note 6: This is a rich topic for discussion. The use of inquiry-based activities
creates a greater likelihood of the unexpected happening. Teachers may be more likely to
take risks and use inquiry-based activities if they understand strategies for dealing with
the unexpected and value it as a teaching/learning experience.
Evaluate Part B Note 7: Ask participants to share their evolution activities. Use these to build an
ongoing database of new evolution activities that course participants can access after the
course is over.
