This is the new updated edition of the first book in the bestselling Uncovering Student Ideas in Science series. Like the first edition of volume 1, this book helps pinpoint what your students know (or think they know) so you can monitor their learning and adjust your teaching accordingly. Loaded with classroom-friendly features you can use immediately, the book includes 25 “probes”—brief, easily administered formative assessments designed to understand your students’ thinking about 60 core science concepts.

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The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about adaptation. The probe is designed to reveal whether students think individuals intentionally change their physical characteristics or behaviors in response to an environmental change.

Justified list

Adaptation, behavioral response, ecosystem change, interdependence

There is no completely right answer to this question, but the best answer is E: The divos died. In common, everyday usage, the term adapt is interpreted as any type of deliberate modification in response to a change. Biologically speaking, individuals generally do not intentionally adapt to drastic changes in their environment by changing their physical characteristics (such as fur length or ability to eat certain foods based on teeth or mouth structure) or inherited behaviors (such as where they seek shelter or whether they hibernate). The process of adaptation does not involve effort, wanting, or trying.

Some individual divos may have been born with variations that made them better suited to survive a change in the environment and to reproduce, passing on their traits to new generations that would be better adapted to the changed environment. However, most of the divos probably died because the physical structures, physiology, and behaviors they were born with no longer fit the changed environment. Populations may adapt over time, but individuals generally do not adapt to change during their lifetimes.

Elementary Students

In the elementary grades, students build understandings of biological concepts through direct experience with living things and their habitats. The idea that organisms depend on their environment is developed. The focus in the early elementary grades should be on establishing the primary association of organisms with their environments. The emphasis in the upper elementary grades is on organisms’ dependence on various aspects of the environment and how the traits they were born with help them function in a particular environment. They observe variations in organisms and develop the idea that variations can sometimes help an organism survive changes in their environment.

Middle School Students

Students at the middle school level develop an understanding of the mechanism of inheritance that can result in variations that support an individual’s survival and reproduction. Adaptation as a characteristic the organism is born with that helps it survive in a changed environment now extends to populations and is linked to natural selection. The emphasis is on how the adaptation is passed on to offspring and through generations of offspring.

High School Students

At the high school level, students refine and deepen their understanding of inherited traits, variations, and natural selection. The idea of natural selection leads to the culminating idea of biological evolution, a major focus in biology. Students take their understanding of the mechanisms for evolution and apply it over large time scales. They extend their models to explain how new species form or how species become extinct.

This probe can be used with students in grades 3–12. Explain to students that the divo is an imaginary organism. However, the challenges it faces because of the drastic change in its environment would produce similar responses from real organisms. Consider adding additional distracters for structural changes (such as growing stronger teeth for cracking open seeds), behavioral changes (such as learning to swim so it could get off the island), or the divo becoming extinct.

• Current studies of students’ misconceptions about adaptation and natural selection continue to show that students think organisms deliberately adapt to changes in their environment (Coley and Tanner 2012; Keskin and Kose 2015; Nehm and Reilly 2007).
• Middle school and high school students may believe that organisms are able to intentionally change their bodily structure to be able to live in a particular habitat or that they respond to a changed environment by seeking a more favorable environment. It has been suggested that the language about adaptation used by teachers or textbooks may cause or reinforce these beliefs (AAAS 2009).
• Studies have found that children tend to view adaptation as an intention by an organism to meet its needs for survival and that organisms can change in major ways in response to a change in their environment (Driver et al. 1994).
• An older study by Brumby (1979) of Australian and English biology students showed that even after studying upper level biology, only 18% of the students could correctly apply natural selection to evolutionary change. Most believed that individuals can adapt to a change in the environment if they need to.

Fowler, F. 2015. For the love of infographics. Science Scope 38 (7): 42–48.

Keeley, P. 2014. Habitat change: Formative assessment of a cautionary word. Science and Children 51 (7): 26–27.

Kovak, A. 2003. Adapting to the environment. The Science Teacher 70 (2): 30–33.

NGSS Archived Webinar: NGSS Core Ideas— Biological Evolution, www.youtube.com/wat ch?v=np_1G4Swut4&index=5&list=PL2 pHc_BEFW2JjWYua2_z3ccHEd6x5jIBK.

Passmore, C., J. S. Gouvea, C. Guy, and C. Griesemer. 2017. Core idea LS4—Biological evolution: Unity and diversity. In Disciplinary core ideas: Reshaping teaching and learning, ed. R. G. Duncan, J. Krajcik, and A. E. Rivet, 165–180. Arlington, VA: NSTA Press.

Sisk-Hilton, S., K. Metz, and E. Berson. 2018. Jumping into natural selection. Science and Children 55 (6): 29–35.

• Two similar probes about adaptation and a changing environment that can be used with this probe are “Changing Environment” in Uncovering Student Ideas in Life Science, Volume 1 (Keeley 2011) and “Adaptation” in Uncovering Student Ideas in Science, Volume 4 (Keeley and Tugel 2009).
• Revisiting the probe a second time gives students an opportunity to apply what they learned about adaptation and variation. Add a third dimension to the probe by asking students to use the crosscutting concept of cause and effect in their revised explanation.
• Some intentions that are colloquially called adaptations are controlled by an organism. For example, we say a person adapts to the cold by putting on warmer clothing. When dealing with individual organisms, acclimatization would be a better term to use for noninheritable changes made by an organism during its lifetime in response to a change. In other words, people acclimate to the cold.
• Be aware that Lamarckian interpretations of an individual’s adaptation to its environment may impede understanding of evolution through natural selection.
• A common activity used in elementary and middle school science is to have students design an imaginary organism that is adapted to a particular habitat or to take an existing organism and make changes so it is adapted to a new environment. Be aware that these activities can perpetuate the common misconception that organisms intentionally adapt, and it is best to carefully evaluate adaptation activities before using them.
• Compare and contrast with students the everyday use of the word adaptation with the scientific meaning of the word. Add this to students’ growing number of examples of the ways we use words in our everyday lives that are not always the same as the scientific use of the words.
• Young children should have opportunities to observe organisms in their environment and notice how their inherited traits help them live in their environment. Stress that they are born with these traits.
• Students can research the Galapagos finches to learn how even a slight variation in beak size helps some finches survive when food is scarce. Students can explore patterns and data on the Galapagos finches at http:// bguile.northwestern.edu.