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Online Course for Teachers: Teaching Evolution

About this Course 

SESSION 7

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.

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