Lesson 3:
You are a Scientist?
Goal:
Understand about scientific inquiry and that everyone can be a scientist.
Learning
Objective: Students will be able to describe what a scientist does and
specifically what a paleontologist does.
Materials:
Background
information: Scientists describe objects, events and organisms, they classify
them and test their descriptions and classifications. Scientist try to explain
how the natural world works by using their senses. When scientist explain how
the natural world works they use the evidence (observations) gained when using
their senses. They share what they know with the rest of the world. A Scientist
want people to ask questions about what they know in order to have others agree
and make it part of what knowledge is. Knowledge is socially constructed in
this manner. Students are naturally scientists because they are curious and
want to share what they know. Learning science works best when interest is
facilitated and choice of what to investigate is utilized.
New
Mexico Science Standard I Benchmark I
describes how students of 6th-8th grade are to be able to
use the scientific method to develop questions, design, and conduct experiments
using appropriate technologies, analayze, and evaluate results, make
predictions and communicate findings. In this lesson students will apply
scientific process skill to develop a story of a set of foot prints by
collecting qualitative and quantitative data, justify their story with
evidence, model and explain relationships between the foot prints and know how
to recognize and explain anomalous data.
Procedure:
1. Tell the students that they are going to be paleontologists.
Write the word on the board and have the students add a journal entry to their journals
about what a paleontologist does. This is to encourage active thinking about
what they know and do not know.
2. Ask for volunteers to share their journal entry and/or tell
what they know about a paleontologist. Encourage all to share and a discussion.
3. Tell them the Monument is a special scientific discovery
because the fossils are trackways of Paleozoic animals.
4. Show them a large piece of butcher paper on the floor and
ask for a volunteer to wet their feet with the medium selected and to walk across
the paper. Ask the students what information can you tell from those prints.
Allow for all the answers. Encourage thinking by probing with these questions
like these:
o
Can you tell
how tall the person is with just the tracks? How do you know?
o
Can you tell
if the person ran, walked, was talking, dancing, or sprinting? What evidence
gives you that idea?
5. Then ask
for another volunteer to hop across the paper. Probe again with questions:
o
What is the difference in the prints?
o
What evidence is there to support the difference in
walking and hopping?
o
Can you tell that the prints were made at different
times? How?
6. Ask the
students if the information that we are getting from the prints are qualitative
or quantitative observations? Write these on the board:
o
Qualitative is when observations are by quality or
descriptions.
o
Quantitative is when observations are in quantities
or numbers
7. It is also important that the students
know that observations are different than interpretations or inferences. If a
student uses an inference instead of an observation, ask them:
o
Why they think that?
o
What evidence did they use to make that inference?
8. Tell the
students that scientists make observations but are careful about making
inferences because they need the observations or data collected to back up
their inferences. The data collected from observations is the evidence to the
inferences and interpretations. Paleontologists make observations about
ecosystems, organisms of long ago.
9. Students
should be in groups for this next part. Give the students a set of tracks to
practice in teams making the qualitative and quantitative observations. Students
should have time to discuss and talk about their ideas. If the groups are
having trouble with quantitative observations then you can get them thinking by
giving them a centimeter ruler. Or tell them to make a data table with
characteristics of prints. Check for understanding of the difference between an
observation and an inference as you move around the room.
10. After
observations are made students can begin to make an inference for each
observation. This may take some time, but again students need time to talk and
discuss.
11. Tell them
that everyone in the group may have different ideas and that they should list
them all only if there is evidence to support the idea.
12. Tell the
students to write a story as a group about what might have happened for the
animals that made the prints. Encourage them to be creative but to use words
that indicate that there isn’t data to support. Their lists of quantitative as
well as qualitative data should be their evidence to support the
interpretations of the tracks.
13. Each group
will present their story to the other groups. The students can ask questions, get
clarifications, and make further inferences. Students should be able to relate
how scientists also get peer and public review of their findings when the
classmates ask questions.
14. Tell the
students that paleontologists use data like this and more to make
interpretations. They look for patterns, relationships and reasonableness in
their observations. Show them the pictures starting on pages 18 of the Traces
of the Permian Sea Coast, which is in digital form as well. Point out and ask
for the observations compared to the interpretations of the fossils. Ask
students what kind of qualitative observations compared to qualitative
observations.
15. Students
should next watch a 15 minute video of
Jerry McDonald, the amateur paleontologist that discovered and removed some
of the trackway fossils. He describes some of his observations and
interpretations of the fossils.
16. Have the
students add another journal entry that describes what a paleontologist does.
Ask for volunteer to share their entry and begin a discussion.
Evaluation: Check for understanding in their
stories (and/or in discussion) how scientists make observations that are
quantitative and qualitative in their lists. Check for understanding the
evidence supports the events of the story of the tracks, description of the
animals and more.
Extensions: Students can make their own tracks
like in steps 4-8 for each other to interpret in their groups. Different
scenarios, animals, or behaviors can be presented in the tracks to be
interpreted by others.
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| Set of tracks for step 9 |
