Telling the Whole Story Using picture books to illustrate the process of scientific explanations

BACKGROUND Developing a scientific explanation is like telling a story about the world. To illustrate this, we are going to use children’s picture books as a model. You will receive a set of pictures from a children’s book that you will use to help you tell the story. You are trying to tell a story that has already been written using only pictures as clues. The difference is, in science, the story has “already been written” but it has “never been told” when scientists are trying to piece it together using the clues they have.

STEP 1 Your group will receive a set of pictures. Use the pictures as clues to help you figure out what the story is about. Put the pictures in an order that you think makes the best sense for the story. Decide what you think the story says, then use a post-it for each picture to write down your story. Place each post-it beside the picture it goes with.

REFLECTION In many cases, scientists don’t have the benefit of seeing the entire “picture” at once. Instead, continuous research provides a few clues at a time. To simulate this, I only gave you a few pictures from the story at first. But now, to represent “further research”, I’m going to provide you with a few more “clues” in the form of more pictures from your story.

STEP 2 Your group will receive a second set of pictures from your story. Compare the new pictures to your original pictures. Decide if they make sense in the context of your original story. If they do, place them in the sequence where they fit and write a post-it for them to continue telling your story. If they do not, you will need to rearrange the pictures so that they make sense. Then, re-write your story using a post-it for each picture.

REFLECTION Just like your story likely changed after receiving the second set of pictures, scientific explanations also change as new evidence causes us to look at a topic in a new or different way. Also, remember that science isn’t done in a “bubble”. Scientists often communicate with others that are studying similar topics, sharing ideas and constructive criticism. In this way, they strengthen each others’ arguments.

STEP 3 Choose one group member to stay behind with your story. When I give the word, the other group members will have two minutes to explore the rest of the room and visit with other groups that may or may not be “studying” the same story as you. You’ll be able to share ideas that may help you shape your story. When you get back to your group, you may or may not want to change the order of your pictures and the content of your story. Talk about any changes you want to make, but wait to make them until the next step.

STEP 4 You’ll receive another set of pictures to incorporate into your story. Compare the new pictures to your current story. Decide if they make sense in the context of your current story. If they do, place them in the sequence where they fit and write a post-it for them to continue telling your story. If they do not, you will need to rearrange the pictures so that they make sense. Then, re-write your story using a post-it for each picture.

STEP 5 You’ll receive one final picture to incorporate into your story. Compare the new picture to your current story. Decide if it makes sense in the context of your current story. If it does, place them in the sequence where they fit and write a post-it for them to continue telling your story. If it does not, you will need to rearrange the pictures so that they make sense. Then, re-write your story using a post-it for each picture.

REFLECTION Think about all of the ways that your story changed throughout this process. Compare that to scientists trying to shape a scientific explanation. In step 5, you got one last picture…in some cases, that picture may have caused some groups to have to rewrite their entire story. That illustrates how valuable each piece of evidence can be to the scientific process.

REFLECTION Finally, compare this lesson to the puzzle lesson from a few days ago. How are they similar? When I gave you the first set of pictures, you may have known that some pictures were “missing”…but you couldn’t have known how many or what they looked like. By the end, you may have a pretty good idea about your story, but you may still be missing some pictures… Is it possible for scientists to ever be 100% sure that they have ALL of the information about a topic? What does this mean about the concept of “proving” an explanation? What might we say instead of “proven”?

How will this shape your story? STEP 6 Choose one group member (different from last time) to stay behind with your story. The other group members will have two minutes to visit other groups to compare stories (keep in mind that these groups may or may not be working on the same story, and some may have received pictures that you did not). How will this shape your story?