Nature of Science – Historical Short Story Lesson - Transcript

Teacher: Okay you guys, eyes up here please. So after reading that section of the article and

looking at those questions, what were some of your guys’ ideas? Many people believe scientists

work by themselves. How were the scientists in this story different?

Student: They kind of took each other’s experiments and built off of it.

Student: They worked together.

Teacher: How did they work together?

Student: They… experimented with each other. They took each other’s ideas and made them

bigger.

Teacher: Can you repeat that last part, please.

Student: Um they took each other’s ideas and um made them bigger.

Teacher: Okay… and why is collaboration important then?

Student: Um so you can share your ideas and build off of each other’s um ideas cause someone

might know something that you don’t.

Teacher: Okay... Thinking back to our activity from last week, how is our work similar to that of

these scientists. Thinking about working together versus by yourself, how did you guys build off

of each other’s ideas?

Student: Well, like, one of us came up with the three marble idea. Where one of us took a

marble and flicked it into the other three but then the other people thought differently like

putting it in a straight line and other people just like put them all close together instead of

spreading them out.

Teacher: Okay. Any other…what other ides do you have? … Okay. You guys can go ahead and

turn to the next page. (Makes comment to a student) *Yours is actually I think on the previous

page* Read this last little section that says “the ideas of energy”

Student: Oh, that’s what I read.

Teacher: Alright, so just go ahead and reread over that. So read over this last section, jot down

some notes, and then talk with your table partners about some of the questions and what you

read.

Teacher: *walking around”

Students: *reading*

Teacher: How are you doing on reading time?

Student: Good, still reading.

Teacher: Okay, I want to make sure you have enough time.

Students: *talking in small groups* (inaudible)

Teacher: *approaches small groups* What do you mean by stuff? Think about what we have

talked about today and why scientists have to be creative and imaginative. *leaves small group

to continue discussing and approaches different table* What were some of your ideas?

Student: Science takes many many years. Depending on what like the topic is and like for

energy it took like over 100 years.

Teacher: Okay *leaves small group to continue discussing*

Teacher: Okay, eyes up here please. So after reading through that last section and looking at

the question, the first one, “some people think science is done very quickly” but after reading

through the story how long do you think science takes?

Student: 30 or 40 years.

Teacher: Okay.

Student: Um a very very long time because depending on what the topic is it will take different

amounts of time.

Student: Many years.

Teacher: Why would it take many years?

Student: Because certain things like sicknesses, like it takes like many years to get a cure

depending what… how they like experiment the different medicine. It might even take like a

decade to figure it out but usually it doesn’t because I mean, there's lots of variables in

experiments.

Teacher: Okay.

Student: Umm, well, it would probably take a while because you’re trying to think of something

from scratch and they have no idea what has to go in whatever you’re making, whatever you’re

doing, whatever you research.

Teacher: Okay, how might that change over the years then, things coming from scratch?

Because that is not always the case. Why does that change and how does that change?

Student: Umm because we have all these resources that have so much information. About

everything, like oh I want to study energy. There are many other scientists who have studied

energy so you can kind of read their work and what they did and um just kind of go off of them

and study more and try to build more from that.

Teacher: Now take a look at that last question that you guys talked about. “How do the

scientists in this story have to use imagination and creativity?”

Student: They have to use imagination and creativity to have the ability to put things together,

like something…

Teacher: What other ideas do you have?

Student: Um because of their imagination and creativity they came up with wanting to find out

what energy was and what form it is and understand it.

Teacher: Okay. So how else do we use creativity and imagination?

Students: ….

Teacher: Think back to our marble activity. How did we use creativity and imagination?

Student: Umm, we umm, kept thinking of new ways to do things and umm how to do them and

what might work better then what others were doing.

Teacher: What else helped us besides imagination and creativity?

Student: Logic

Teacher: How did other people you were working with help you?

Student: Because they come up with new ideas that other people might not have thought of

and just kind of doing different things that you might not have thought of or noticed.

Teacher: So what does this story tell you about people who do science?

Student: That they are hardworking and must be very dedicated to do the things they do

Teacher: So thinking about this article and the stuff we talked about has your idea of a scientist

changed?

Student: *Speaking* (Inaudible)

Teacher: Okay. What are some things we might add or take away from this list?

Student: Crazy hair and go mad

END OF 10 MINUTES