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Teacher Guide to the TIES Middle Childhood (Grades 3-5) Curriculum UnitSince its inception in April of 2015, The Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science has presented over 150 workshops in 48 US States for middle school science teachers. TIES is a non-profit project whose aim is to help teachers teach evolutionary biology in an engaging, effective manner. Our main goal is to provide teachers with an entire unit of instruction specifically addressing curriculum standards. The unit contains content, hands-on activities, online games, and videos. Our materials are free and available for download from .Because of the resounding success of TIES at the middle school level, the TIES team now aims to provide elementary school teachers with similar support. When you download the Elementary School Ready-to-Go Evolution Unit, you will find that each slide includes friendly teacher notes to guide you through the resources and content. Important terms include: species, adaptation, and population, and variation. While each US state’s standards vary, the following NGSS Middle Childhood Science Standards encapsulate what should be taught in grades 3-5. 3-LS4-1. Analyze and interpret data?from fossils to provide evidence of the organisms and the environments in which they lived long ago.3-LS4-2. Use evidence to construct an explanation for how?the variations in characteristics among individuals of the same species?may provide advantages?in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing.?3-LS4-3. Construct an argument with evidence that?in a particular habitat some organisms?can survive well,?some survive less well, and some cannot survive at all.43-LS4-4. Make a claim about the merit of?a solution to a problem?caused when the environment changes and the types of plants and animals that live there?may change.For example, the Florida Standards for grades 3-5 include all but the first standard on fossils. Therefore, a Florida teacher can choose to include or remove the lessons involving fossils in his/her classroom.In this guide, we will address the basic points of evolutionary life science. While our ready-to-go curriculum unit will provide you with everything you need to target your science standards, it’s important to understand the big picture.What is Evolution?Evolution is the unifying theme of the life sciences. It’s been said that without evolution, biology is just stamp collecting. So, what is Evolution? First of all, let’s address the word theory. While in everyday language, a theory is regularly defined as a guess or a hunch, it means something entirely different in science. A theory is a broad explanation of a natural phenomena based on facts, repeatedly-tested hypotheses, and laws. The Theory of Gravitational Attraction explains why we have gravity. The Heliocentric Theory explains how the sun is the center of our Solar System. When my students tell me that “Evolution is just a theory,” I ask them if they want their surgeon to wash his/her hands before operating on them. When they say yes, I answer, “Why? After all, that’s just a theory, too.” It’s the Germ Theory of Disease. To become a theory, it must be supported by hundreds of observations, facts and accepted hypotheses. For more information, check out this terrific video on the subject: does evolution explain?Evolution explains how all living things on this planet are related, how we all descend from common ancestors. It explains how this vast, beautiful array of millions and millions of species got here in the first place. We urge you to check out the many wonderful resources on our webpage which cover these ideas. For starters, check out: The 12 Days of Evolution Series at is the evidence behind evolution?Theories, laws, and accepted hypotheses require evidence. What is the evidence behind evolution? There’s lots of it. In fact, of all the scientific theories, the theory of evolution arguably has the most evidence behind it and that evidence is coming from many different places:Fossils- traces of long-dead organismsBiogeography-the study of the geographical distribution of fossils. It would not make sense to find the modern-day sloth in South America and the fossils of the ancient sloths in Siberia. The fossils of extinct organisms appear in the same place as the modern-day descendants of those extinct organisms.The Law of Superposition-No fossil has ever been found in the wrong place. The oldest rock (lowest layer) contains the oldest organisms.Artificial Selection- For many centuries, humans have changed certain plants and animals by only allowing those individuals with desirable characteristics to breed. Natural selection, the driving mechanism of evolution, has done the same thing over a larger time scale.Vestigial Structures- the evolutionary legacy we carry within our own bodies. They are features that were adaptations for an organism’s ancestor but have evolved to no longer perform their original function due to a change in the organism’s environment, like wisdom teeth, or the hind legs embedded in a whale’s blubber. Check out: structures- (ex. forearms) features in different species that are similar because those species share a common parative embryology- embryonic development is strikingly similar among related organismsGenetic Evidence- Today, advances in genetic research show us how similar we really are to other organisms. We can build a family tree based on DNA and protein sequences. Check out: does evolution happen?This is a complicated subject, but one of the driving mechanisms of evolution is called NATURAL SELECTION. Simply stated, natural selection means that random genetic mutations arise in a population of living things. Some of these mutations are harmful and will hurt the individual’s chances of surviving. Other mutations are neutral, they do not help or hurt the individual. Sometimes, a mutation can be beneficial, helping the individual survive better than its companions. If this mutation is passed on to its offspring, the entire population can change over time, with more and more individuals exhibiting the desirable characteristic. Check out: of the challenges about teaching evolution is the unlimited number of misconceptions that exist. For example, the misconception that humans came from monkeys. This is false. Humans and monkeys share a common ancestor. We highly recommend the UC Berkeley’s comprehensive webpage, Understanding Evolution. For a look at the many misconceptions that teachers can face in the classroom, check out their page on that topic: hope this short introduction to our resources will help you teach the TIES Elementary School Curriculum Unit more effectively. Many more links to the web’s best videos and informative pages can be found on the TIES website. (). We invite you to check it out and learn all you can about this fascinating subject. The actual middle school curriculum unit with all of the information found in this guide and much, much more can be downloaded for free here: you begin to understand evolutionary biology, you can truly begin to comprehend what Charles Darwin meant when he stated, “There is grandeur to this view of life.” ................
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