HELPING K-8 STUDENTS RECOGNIZE AND MAKE INFERENCES INVOLVING FOSSILS

The existence of the National Science Education Standards and the recent adoption of new K-8 Science Standards in Tennessee offer an opportunity to promote paleontological education in grades K-8. However, K-8 teachers have generally had little exposure to paleontology and are likely to rely on available teaching resources instead of trying to create new ones. Examination of easily available teaching resources reveals three significant shortcomings: (1) the process of Natural Selection is often very poorly described, (2) the resources are not correlated to the TN Standards (which, for example, call for the teaching of dating methods and the rock cycle at the middle school level), and (3) inferences are often presented as facts, with no reference to the observations on which they are based. Although the first two shortcomings need to be addressed, it is the third shortcoming that is the focus of our presentation.

The new TN Standards call for all students, by the end of third grade, to be able to make inferences from fossils. There is a need to create reference materials and curriculum guides that share with students the various “clues” paleontologists have used to construct vivid descriptions of past environments and of the lives of now-extinct creatures, and that allow students to experience the intellectual pleasure of trying to interpret clues from and about the past. In our presentation, we will present some examples of currently available teacher resources, point out their shortcomings (particularly in terms of the issue of observations versus inferences), and suggest ways that GSA members could contribute to the development of new materials.