Scientists often get annoyed, or even angry, when creationists claim “evolution is just a theory”. It’s often unclear whether creationists are deliberately using a widespread confusion about the use of the word “theory” in science to their advantage or whether they genuinely believe that the theory of evolution is simply a guess, an idea, that should be viewed as no more important or valid than any other idea about how life on Earth developed. As a science teacher, I often emphasise to my students the precise meaning of the word… Read more Evolution, Sexism and Racism – why definitions matter →
This short film, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, features a stunning animation that should be useful for teaching evolution at KS4. You’ll still need to show your students a diagram of the Tree of Life at some point, but this film does a great job of bringing such diagrams to life. You can download a high definition version of the film at the Wellcome Trust’s dedicated “Tree of Life” website where you’ll also find a bunch of other resources to help teach evolution, including worksheets and the transcript of the… Read more The Tree of Life →
Skin colour matters to our students. As much as we’d like to pretend otherwise, it’s still something that plays a big role in how they define each other and how they define themselves. I’ve found that my students are fascinated by the brief discussion we have about skin colour when looking at melanin in the P2 unit of the 21st Century Science course. It’s refreshing for them to take a scientific look at the issue and it’s definitely one of the “relevant” bits of the course that actually makes an… Read more The Science of Skin →