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Explanations means to explain what you are learning in science and explains is a little more and makes is easy to rememory

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Young elementary school children are capable of understanding complex scientific concepts - such as natural selection - when you cater to their natural human drive for a good explanation, according to Boston University researchers. Their findings are published in the journal Psychological Science.

It is generally assumed that natural selection is so complex - so beyond the grasp of young children - that educational standards suggest it not be taught comprehensively until ages 13 to 18. But Boston University psychologist Dr. Deborah Kelemen and her team wanted to see if very young students (ages five to eight) could grasp the process at all.

The researchers developed a 10-page picture storybook that covered the idea of natural selection with a group of fictional mammals with long trunks, called pilosas.

The story introduced students to natural selection with the following predicament: The pilosas use their trunks to catch insects. In the past, most of the pilosas had wide trunks. Only a few had thin trunks. Then extreme climate change drove most of the insects underground, into long, narrow tunnels where only the pilosas with thin trunks could reach them.

So how did the pilosas evolve over time from a group of animals having trunks of varying widths to those with thin trunks predominating? Much to the researchers' surprise, the children who heard the story about the pilosas completely got it.

"We're still astonished by what we found," said Kelemen. "It shows that kids are a lot smarter than we ever give them credit for. They can handle a surprising degree of complexity when you frame things in a way that taps into the natural human drive for a good, cohesive explanation."

The conventional wisdom is that young children should be taught only isolated facts - such as that food is needed for survival or that animals have useful body parts - without tying the facts together into an explanation of how or why it works. The researchers, however, make the case that giving explanations and tying facts together early on may help avoid learning problems later on.

"Young children are natural explanation-seekers," said Kelemen. Sometime around preschool, they start intuitively thinking that natural phenomena exist for a purpose or operate by design.

To an eight-year-old, it makes perfect sense to think that rivers exist so crocodiles have a place to live, or that giraffes have long necks so they can reach leaves high in the trees.

During the study, not only were the kids able to understand how pilosas evolved, but they were also able to generalize the concept. In other words, they applied what they learned from the pilosas to other species of novel animals, even three months later.

"Most picture books that hint at natural selection only further confuse kids," Kelemen said. They anthropomorphize the animals, leave out important facts and give up on explanations altogether. Or the books are so flashy the kids can't focus on the story.

"All kinds of bells and whistles are often built into storybooks," Kelemen said. "Everyone thinks that is going to make the storybook fun for the kid."

Before developing the pilosa book, the researchers combined what they knew as developmental psychologists with research on science education.

They invented fictional animals so that children wouldn't have any pre-conceived ideas. They kept the story and the pictures simple. The narrative about how the pilosas lived and died - and the explanation of how and why they evolved over time - unfolded gradually, with one biological fact logically connecting to the next.

"I had one child say to me, 'Wow, I think my head is going to explode I learned so much today,'" said co-author Natalie Emmons, Ph.D.

Source: Boston University

Young child thinking about complex concepts photo by shutterstock.

With Right Explanations, Young Kids Grasp Complex Scientific Concepts

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With Right Explanations, Young Kids Grasp Complex Scientific Concepts

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Kinetic energy is when you thow the ball in the sky. if it is lighty it will go in the sky high. But if it is big it will go down fast.

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Potential and Kinetic energy definition 

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Potential energy is mass and the pounds of the ball. it is being to ball down on the ground. so it depend on how big the ball it or how small

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This week, Drew and I decided to try something new, so we made a recording of the whole post for your listening pleasure! Give it a try and let us know what you think, or skip this and read on!

http://veryrevealing.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Very-Revealing-Energy_mixdown.mp3

It's been a long time since I took a science class. While I remember the physical details of the classrooms and personal scenarios of the people in those rooms, like whether my science teacher had sweaty armpits, I can't, for example, recite all the Newtonian laws. One of my teachers did have very sweaty armpits. We called her sweaty Soffietti behind her back. That was very mean.

Yet at times, a couple of bolded terms resurface to my mind. Something in science unlocks a thought I can't pin down with the words from my own lexical bank. Science textbooks describe the very nature of things on this planet, explaining why and how things fall and heat up and change; I reach for them when my other vocabulary ceases to explain, when the science becomes the exact language I need to explain why and how I fall and heat up and change.

This week's term of choice: potential energy.

I learned physics from a squat Yoda-like man near retirement. He let us take open book tests, spoke with a lisp, and drove a mustard yellow PT Cruiser, although, he would tell you the color was "Aztec gold."

Many of our physics lessons came on VHS tapes, left to a Canadian scientist named Paul who enthusiastically swung bowling balls on ropes and whipped tablecloths from beneath perfectly set dinner tables.

From what I remember of Paul's tapes, potential energy is the energy of position. Its not the cool, flashy energy of a speeding bullet or a tossed ball but rather the bullet with the hand on the trigger, the ball before release. Scientists please forgive me. I am co-opting science for my own metaphoric uses, and from about this point on, I don't have much scientific ground to stand on.

In my own field notes I scribble: position matters. Not just movement itself. Science values the potential and positioning of an object, not just the soaring balls and bullets. It ascribes a value to the rock balancing at the top of a waterfall.

Not so much in the American economy of success:

Speed.

Strength.

Rightness.

We spend lifetimes chasing down shiny titles and assume our path leads upward and onward, somewhere at the edge of where our bootstraps can reach.

If someone wants to work in education, we encourage him to first become a certified teacher, and after some time in this field, if the teacher succeeds, we encourage him to become a principal, whether or not that is where this particular person fits.

As high schoolers, friends of our parents ask where we will go to college, and as soon as we hit pubescence, we dodge questions about who we are with and when/if we will marry. From there, we get interrogated about our reproductive prospects and field other inevitable questions all the way to retirement and beyond.

The assumption remains that moving, achieving, surmounting the next highest peak makes the best possible life for everyone. The next thing is the right thing.

For some, this works. But it didn't work for me. It leaves me grasping at futures I don't even want and devaluing the lifestyle that suits me and Drew.

Most recently, I've made a backward slide. I currently work as an instructional assistant on the west side of Chicago. I make half of what I did previously and have one too many degrees for my position.

And yet, I have never felt more effective in the lives of students, never felt more able to live the life that excites me.

The higher I climbed, the less agency I felt, the less mobility I had to do the things I desired to do and that produced the highest effects.

The higher one goes, the more restraints and concerns the person must attend to. By the time a political candidate reaches a position of power, he or she comes hampered with commitments, promises, connections to campaign supporters, a history of sacrifices and compromises, and an alliance to various lobbyists.

I can do most if I situate myself strategically, if I'm positioned. When we sit in the right place, our influence can multiply by a thousand times. Sometimes this position does not come with earthly fame or health insurance.

Here's the thing, if the top's the thing for you, then great, but more and more, I think our influence happens on a lower than grass root level. Its subterranean.

Today, I want to value our moments teetering on the precipice, stalled before our trajectory. Here society grooms us to feel as failures. Yet, in this place, you may be gathering energy to go further or you may just improve your balance.

Our society views stillness as dangerous and a fully written novel hidden under someone's bed constitutes a tragedy. We think an audience must hear and see the tree for the tree to have fallen.

Today I am nowhere near the top of anything. I am not published. I am not famous in the improv community or a master teacher headed toward an administrative role. Heck, I moved to the suburbs, which feels like a sort of forfeit at times.

Trudging forward and trying to force things to happen can provide momentary comfort, but I find when I act out of my unique positioning, when I actively wait in the present and keep my eyes open, sometimes I encounter more than I ever could have planned out in a series of to-do lists.

I love the improv teams I play on, the people and the art we create. I relish every moment I steal away to pound out a blog entry or two. I love my relationship with my 6'4" tube sock Drew, and our sweet little home resting nicely between the people I love in the city and those friends and family who live even further west.

I am not on SNL nor do I want to pursue that, but I make people laugh on stage. I make very little money, but I get to flexibly work with students and leave work at work. With less expectations, I can teach kids how to make guacamole or pull a small group to read a book about popcorn and let students hold real popcorn kernels in their hands.

In the church, we talk about tentmakers or apostles that took up common trades in a new land, planting themselves within community life to be missionaries. Today, missionaries apply this term to ventures overseas, but I rarely hear the term put to use where I find it most useful, right here.

These people, as far as I can tell, did not get jazzed over tent fabrics and pitching techniques, but they did these works to position themselves for the work they felt called to do.

When I think about positioning, I start to consider a career as a postal worker or someone who staples packets for a living, is that a job? It seems like its not a real job.

Anyway. My hope for you and me today is this: I hope we stop hating where we are. I hope we stop looking at our lives like the stock market asking questions of profit and worth. I hope we look at the view from the top of the precipice and see what this unique time in our life positions us to do.

I need permission to dive down to the ground toward a simple life close to the earth, one that leaves room for helping kids and writing on occasion. I want to transform my dreams to a lovely picture, not a good looking graph.

I won't always need to internalize the truth of potential energy. Someday, situation might require a friend to give me a swift kick to my behind and to tell me to chase something with all my heart. After all, remaining on the edge of the waterfall can tempt us with safety and lull us to sleep in the status-quo.

But right now, I need more of us to see possibility in where we stand. Where we stand today has a value and energy to it. Don't miss out on the potential energy of today.

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Living with Potential Energy - Meredith Bazzoli

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This week, Drew and I decided to try something new, so we made a recording of the whole post for your listening pleasure! Give it a try and let us know what you think, or skip this and read on! It's been a long time since I took a science class.