Stephanie Stock
Thunder Bay Junior High
Alpena, Mi

"Jigsaw Puzzle Teaching"

A few years back I taught a group of students who had "learned the year
before that we never truly prove anything in science.  The kids, of course,
interpreted this as "We know nothing".

While the teaching was technically correct, the kids came off sounding
uneducated.  I created an activity called science is like a puzzle to remedy
this.  I took a small jigsaw puzzle (@ 250 pieces) for each class.  Put it
together then divided it into a section for each lab group.

Each group first got one piece from their section.  They had to infer what
the whole picture was.  Then each person got a piece and they could confer.
Finally the group got all their pieces and put them together.  At each step
they recorded their predictions for the whole puzzle.  Finally, they
connected their section into the whole.

The conclusion for this was to analyze the accuracy of their predictions,
naturally they were more accurate the more information they had.  We then
connected this to the nature of science.  Some questions have lots of
evidence (Newton's Laws) and we are pretty clear on the picture.  Others
(Big Bang theory) there are gaps and we are still putting the puzzle
together.

Of course I picked up the puzzles at garage sales and there were always a
few missing pieces.  Some one would always point this out and I could ask if
we ever had all the data?  The kids agreed that no we wouldn't, but that the
few missing pieces wouldn't change the final picture.

I haven't done this lab for a few years, but it was one of my favorites for
helping kids understand the nature of science.

 

[Suggest on ESPRIT by Joan Heymont, 27 Aug 2006]