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.

Model-based inquiry , inquiry-based learning , and phenomenon are all popular terms in K–12 science education right now. Science education in our public education system is rapidly changing due to the implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). These standards ask teachers to move away from direct instruction to having students develop their understanding of the natural world through guided-learning activities. Under NGSS, students are expected to develop this understanding through one of the main scientific practices, model building, which requires a complex, real-world phenomenon to drive the learning experience. Phenomena work best in the classroom when they apply to students’ lives and pique their interest. Finding such phenomena can be hard – especially finding ones that have not already been thoroughly explained on the internet. A great way to find a complex, real-world phenomenon that will interest students is to partner with a local research lab to bring part of their research project into the classroom. This article lays out a process for bringing a local research project into the classroom and designing NGSS-aligned curricula around this project to create a more authentic learning experience for high school students.

An in-depth curricular unit exploring the effects of human land use on local water resources was created as part of a Teacher Professional Learning Program at the University of Connecticut’s Natural Resources Conservation Academy. This unit was designed to connect high school students to water resources in their community, both in the field and through the use of interactive mapping technology. These methods engage students in science and technology using multiple disciplines and can help them better understand how their local water resource is affected by the surrounding landscape. In this unit, students explore the dynamics of local water resources and the anthropogenic issues that affect them through field and open-access online inquiry-based activities. The varied lessons within this unit were purposefully created to align with the Next Generation Science Standards and to fit within either an earth science or a biology course. They use existing online geospatial tools and can be tailored to any geographic area of interest.

Given that science and engineering practices are a large focus in the Next Generation Science Standards, biology teachers need to find ways to incorporate the engineering design process into their curriculum. To address this need, I present a lesson that allows for student collaboration in designing and developing a solution to a global problem resulting from overfishing and our use of unsustainable fishing practices. This lesson also demonstrates to students that larger, global issues that seem insurmountable to solve can be broken down into smaller, more manageable pieces. My approach involves having students research a problem related to sustainable fishing practices and design a physical model of a solution to combat their specific issue. Peer review is then used in order to help students revise and edit their models during the lesson in response to the peer feedback received. The lesson will culminate in a presentation to the class about the biological, social, and economic ramifications of both their assigned problem and a potential solution.

Exposing students to carnivorous plants within course-based undergraduate research can heighten student interest in plants and create a foundation on which to build future student projects. Carnivorous plants derive nutrients by trapping animals, but unlike most other predators, they lack mobility and are thought to attract prey through a combination of visual and olfactory cues. As part of a semester-long undergraduate research project for a junior/senior-level plant ecology class, students used carnivorous plants and artificial traps to test the importance of visual cues in the capture of wild-type and visually impaired (w 1118 ) Drosophila melanogaster. Over the 13-week semester, students worked in groups to generate questions, design experiments, analyze data, and present results both orally and in a written manuscript. A major focus was developing students' ability to compare their results with the literature. Upon completion, manuscripts were uploaded to a digital archive for use by future students in designing projects. This database of readily accessible past projects provides students with an accessible literature base that enables them to build upon previous work in a way that more accurately reflects real-world research.

Inquiry-based investigations of diseases are often difficult to safely undertake in middle school or high school science courses. However, by utilizing potatoes as a mammalian analogue, important groups of pathogens can be investigated with common materials available from the local supermarket. This article provides information to guide the exploration of factors underlying the development of the potato disease bacterial soft rot, caused by Pectobacterium caratovorum , and allows students the freedom to develop and test their own hypotheses regarding the development of symptoms, the spread of pathogens, and the impact of host and environmental variables on the progress of disease.

Changing climate conditions pose challenges for many migratory birds, and their responses to these challenges can depend on their biology. To illustrate these impacts, I developed a board game to help elementary school students understand these challenges. The use of the game provides an opportunity to further discuss changes in phenology, the timing of life cycle events, in response to a changing climate.

The activity described in this article is designed to provide biology students with opportunities to engage in a range of academic language as they learn the discipline-specific meanings of the terms “drug,” “poison,” “toxicant,” and “toxin.” Although intended as part of an introductory lesson in a comprehensive unit for the high school level, this approach to teaching academic language can be adapted for use with older or younger students and can be modified to teach other terms.

We used a design-based research approach to develop “data-rich problem” (DRP) tasks intended to support middle and high school students in constructing knowledge about food webs and ecosystem dynamics, specifically the effects of species loss. The marine environment is used for context to promote an understanding of interdependent ecological relationships and the nonlinear and sustaining effects of loss of species. The Food Web DRP tasks we describe are designed for classroom implementation in alignment with the Next Generation Science Standards. The intended time frame for implementation is five days (assuming 50-minute class periods).

The featured exemplar lesson incorporates an inquiry-based investigation, aligned to the 4E × 2 Instructional Model, in which students design, refine, and implement a plan to reduce their carbon footprint in alignment with Next Generation Science Standards (HS-LS2-7). Additional resources are provided to support the successful implementation of this lesson. Further, the article provides a framework for teachers to extend learning beyond the classroom walls.

Models are simplified representations of more complex systems that help scientists structure the knowledge they acquire. As such, they are ubiquitous and invaluable in scientific research and communication. Because science education strives to make classroom activities more closely reflect science in practice, models have become integral teaching and learning tools woven throughout the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Although model-based learning and curriculum are not novel in educational theory, only recently has modeling taken center stage in K–12 national standards for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classes. We present a variety of examples to outline the importance of various types of models and the practice of modeling in biological research, as well as the emphasis of NGSS on their use in both classroom learning and assessment. We then suggest best practices for creating and modifying models in the context of student-driven inquiry and demonstrate that even subtle incorporation of modeling into existing science curricula can help achieve student learning outcomes, particularly for English-language learners. In closing, we express the value of models and modeling in life beyond the classroom and research laboratory, and highlight the critical importance of “model literacy” for the next generation of scientists, engineers, and problem-solvers.

A useful approach to answering the Next Generation Science Standards’ call for teaching students to demonstrate understanding using mathematical representations is use of the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (H-W eq). This article is focused on the meaning of H-W eq and its application, rather than mathematical manipulation. Typical textbook problems are critiqued, and a model problem is presented.

The nature of science (NOS) is an often neglected part of science teaching, yet it provides a vital background for students, detailing how science and scientists work and how scientific knowledge is created, validated, and influenced. Here, I review the concept of NOS and some of the challenges to its inclusion in science classes. In addition, I outline proposals, including those in the Next Generation Science Standards, for those aspects of NOS that should be featured in science classes. Finally, I discuss distinctions in NOS specific to the science of biology and conclude with some thoughts on how NOS can be incorporated into science instruction.

Students often find it challenging to create images of complex, abstract biological processes. Using modified storyboards, which contain predrawn images, students can visualize the process and anchor ideas from activities, labs, and lectures. Storyboards are useful in assessing students’ understanding of content in larger contexts. They enable students to use models to construct explanations, with evidence to support hypotheses – practices emphasized in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Storyboards provide an opportunity for performance assessment of students’ content knowledge against a backdrop of observing patterns, determining scale, and establishing relationships between structure and function – crosscutting concepts within the NGSS framework.

The Next Generation Science Standards ( NGSS Lead States, 2013 ) recommend that science courses engage communities of students in scientific practices that include building accurate conceptual models of phenomena central to the understanding of scientific disciplines. We offer a set of activities, implemented successfully at both the secondary and postsecondary levels, that involve students in guided inquiry toward creation and progressive revision of a robust model of selection that accounts for both natural and sexual selection and their complicated relationship to one another at the level of individuals and populations. Requiring students to progressively revise their models in light of data and previous understanding replicates scientific practice and allows for authentic assessment of students’ growing content knowledge, understanding, and skills regarding scientific modeling and communication processes.

This classroom activity is based on a constructivist learning design and engages students in physically constructing a karyotype of three mock patients. Students then diagnose the chromosomal aneuploidy based on the karyotype, list the symptoms associated with the disorder, and discuss the implications of the diagnosis. This activity is targeted at undergraduates in a nonmajors genetics course, but the goals align with AP Biology Big Idea 3 and Next Generation Science Standards HS-LS3. The activity illustrates the relationship between genotype and phenotype, reinforces the chromosome theory of inheritance, and includes mapping of meiotic nondisjunction events.

Using a design-based research approach, we developed a data-rich problem (DRP) set to improve student understanding of cellular respiration at the ecosystem level. The problem tasks engage students in data analysis to develop biological explanations. Several of the tasks and their implementation are described. Quantitative results suggest that students from the experimental class who participated in the DRP showed significant gains on cellular respiration posttest items, and students from the control class who participated in a non-DRP task showed no significant gains. Qualitative results from interviews and written responses showed that students from the experimental class progressed to deeper “levels of achievement” in cellular respiration. The data-rich tasks promote student understanding of cellular respiration, matter transformation, decomposition, and energy transformation – all goals recommended by the Next Generation Science Standards.

This simple inquiry-based lab was designed to teach the principle of osmosis while also providing an experience for students to use the skills and practices commonly found in science. Students first design their own experiment using very basic equipment and supplies, which generally results in mixed, but mostly poor, outcomes. Classroom “talk and argument” is then used to determine how their experiments could be changed to gather more reliable data. The final assessment consists of both formal and subjective testing, requiring students to explain their design choices.