Charles Darwin would be pleased to know that elementary school children in states that have adopted the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are expected to demonstrate their understanding of several core evolutionary concepts, including trait variation and inheritance, fossils and extinct organisms, common ancestry, natural selection, and adaptation. However, he might also wonder how this is accomplished in the demanding 21st-century science curriculum. In files linked to this article, we provide four lesson plans – with engaging examples, natural selection games, and other interactive activities – that were designed to cover the NGSS Disciplinary Core Ideas in evolutionary biology for grades 3–5, in two one-hour lessons. The lesson plans were developed by college students under the guidance of evolutionary biologists and in consultation with elementary school teachers, and then field tested in elementary school classrooms, as described in an accompanying research article.

Evolution by natural selection is key to understanding life and of considerable practical importance in public health, medicine, biotechnology, and agriculture. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) include natural selection among several evolutionary concepts that all third-graders should know. This article explores a novel approach to developing and testing curricula for teaching natural selection and related concepts to children. College students developed lesson plans with specific evolutionary learning objectives based on the NGSS and taught them at elementary schools. Learning was assessed with a pre/post-test design, and a subset of students was retested after two years. After just two hours of instruction and active-learning activities, students of all three grade levels tested (grades 3–5) demonstrated substantial improvement in their understanding of evolutionary concepts. Students who were retested in grade 5 scored higher than fifth-graders who had not participated previously. The most challenging concepts for all grade levels were common ancestry and natural selection, but fifth-graders showed more improvement than third- and fourth-graders. If this finding is substantiated by further research, an adjustment to the NGSS schedule might be warranted. Spacing evolutionary biology concepts out might be a better strategy than concentrating them all in grade 3.

A paradigm shift away from viewing evolution primarily in terms of adaptation – the “adaptationist programme” of Gould and Lewontin – began in evolutionary research more than 35 years ago, but that shift has yet to occur within evolutionary education research or within teaching standards. We review three instruments that can help education researchers and educators undertake this paradigm shift. The instruments assess how biology undergraduates understand three evolutionary processes other than natural selection: genetic drift, dominance relationships among allelic pairs, and evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo). Testing with these instruments reveals that students often explain a diversity of evolutionary mechanisms incorrectly by invoking misconceptions about natural selection. We propose that increasing the emphasis on teaching evolutionary processes other than natural selection could result in a better understanding of natural selection and a better understanding of all evolutionary processes. Finally, we propose two strategies for accomplishing this goal, interleaving natural selection with other evolutionary processes and the development of bridging analogies to describe evolutionary concepts.

To teach the most central concepts in evolutionary biology, we present an activity in pollination biology. Students play the role of either pollinator or flower and work through a set of scenarios to maximize plant fitness. This “Pollination Game” facilitates critical and inquiry-based thinking, and we accompany each round of the exercise with a set of discussion questions and answers. We have piloted and fine tuned this exercise with high school students, and improved the exercise with the input of high school teachers at a teaching conference. The activity could easily be adapted for freshman undergraduate students.

We describe an alternative to the kinds of observation-based lab exercises that are often used to cover animal and plant evolution with respect to transitioning from aquatic to terrestrial habitats. We wrote this activity to address these objectives, but also to model the process of scientific inquiry and to require students to collect and analyze quantitative data. Additionally, we designed this activity so that students must consider the evolution of plant and animal traits in an integrated fashion.

Evolutionary theory is the foundation of the biological sciences, yet conveying it to General Biology students often presents a challenge, especially at larger institutions where student numbers in foundation courses can exceed several hundred per lecture section. We present a pedagogically sound exercise that utilizes a series of simple and inexpensive simulations to convey the concept of evolution through mutation and natural selection. Questions after each simulation expand student comprehension; a class discussion encourages advanced thinking on mutation and speciation. A final paper requires students to synthesize their learning by summarizing selected papers on these topics. A grading rubric for the papers is included.

We describe a simple field study that we have found useful in introducing students to experimental design. Students manipulate the nutritive gain available from flowers to test the hypothesis that the foraging behavior of nectarivorous insects maximizes energy gain rate. They add sucrose solution to some flowers and water to others; additional flowers are left unmanipulated. Visit durations of foraging butterflies are then measured to test the prediction that individuals will forage longer at patches that offer higher energy gains. The project encourages students to consider how a study's design influences the results obtained, and helps to develop scientific reasoning skills.