Good Thinking! — Natural Selection: Common Misconceptions

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

Subject Area

Science

Grade(s)

7

Overview

Natural Selection: Common Misconceptions reveals common pitfalls in the teaching of evolution through natural selection and suggests effective practices for identifying and addressing student misconceptions.

Science (2015) Grade(s): 7

SC15.7.18

Construct an explanation from evidence that natural selection acting over generations may lead to the predominance of certain traits that support successful survival and reproduction of a population and to the suppression of other traits.

UP:SC15.7.18

Vocabulary

  • Explanation
  • Evidence
  • Evolution
  • Extinct
  • Extinction
  • Natural selection
  • Generation
  • Predominance
  • Heredity
  • Trait
  • Overproduction
  • Reproduction
  • Population
  • Suppression
  • Adaptation
  • Variation

Knowledge

Students know:
  • Characteristics of a species change over time (i.e., over generations) through adaptation by natural selection in response to changes in environmental conditions.
  • Traits that better support survival and reproduction in a new environment become more common within a population within that environment.
  • Traits that do not support survival and reproduction as well become less common within a population in that environment.
  • When environmental shifts are too extreme, populations do not have time to adapt and may become extinct.
  • Multiple cause-and-effect relationships exist between environmental conditions and natural selection in a population.
  • The increases or decreases of some traits within a population can have more than one environmental cause.

Skills

Students are able to:
  • Articulate a statement that relates a given phenomenon to a scientific idea, including natural selection and traits.
  • Identify and use multiple valid and reliable sources of evidence to construct an explanation for natural selection and its effect on traits in a population.
  • Use reasoning to connect the evidence and support an explanation for natural selection and its effect on traits in a population.

Understanding

Students understand that:
  • Adaptation by natural selection acting over generations is one important process by which species change over time in response to changes in environmental conditions.
  • Traits that support successful survival and reproduction in the new environment become more common; those that do not become less common. Thus, the distribution of traits in a population changes.

Scientific and Engineering Practices

Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions

Crosscutting Concepts

Cause and Effect

CR Resource Type

Audio/Video

Resource Provider

PBS

License Type

Custom

Accessibility

Video resources: includes closed captioning or subtitles
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