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 6^th-8^th 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.

Set of tracks for step 9