The Evolutionary Biology of Learning English

We use WordlyWise. It is a basic vocabulary and writing text book. Or series of text books. So far I've been relatively pleased with it. Today though, I'm helping my 7yo with an assignment. The assignment involves reading a short story, followed by answering ten questions. The story is entirely rife with evolutionary biology. I scratched out a couple questions, naively thinking we could salvage the lesson. We started the reading and it just can't let go of its evolutionary biology theme. After fudging a few sentences, and then having to skip an entire paragraph, we just moved on to the next day's lesson.

Anyway, I don't care what your thoughts are on evolution. You should be able to teach English vocab without it.