A Teacher's Guide to Joe on the Go Grades
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
A Teacher’s Guide to Joe on the Go Grades 3-6 Description Joseph Leidy was said to be the last man to know everything. Even when he was just a boy, he was always trying to understand his world. Known as the Father of American Vertebrate paleontology, Joe was always on the go. In the spirit of Joseph Leidy, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University wants you to engage with the world of science in your classroom and take one of natural history’s most important figures with you! Include Lil’ Leidy in your experiments, take a picture, and share your explorations with the Academy! This packet includes activities your class can do that relate to the amazing work that Joseph Leidy did throughout his career Keep reading to improve your understanding of the man behind some of the most interesting finds in natural science. Whether he was solving a murder by taking a close look at cell structure or piecing together fossil remains of an ancient beast based on a modern day descendant, Joseph Leidy was always on the go! Let’s join in celebrating 200 years of discovery at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University and take Joe on the Go! This curriculum guide is broken down into three parts that reflect many of the themes of Joseph Leidy’s personal and professional life. Be a Scientist! asks students to apply general scientific skills to their world. Paleontology Rocks! digs deeper into the field of fossils. Small Worlds takes a closer look at the smaller organisms sharing our planet: parasites. Outcomes Students will understand the contributions of Joseph Leidy not only to the Academy, but also to the field of natural sciences. They will practice the general skills necessary in science such as making observations, recording data, and classifying objects. They will encounter the challenges of paleontology through puzzles, role-playing, and examining current animals. They will explore parasites through games, research, and scientific drawings. Vocabulary paleontology classification parasite parasitology organism observations taphonomy Joe on the Go: Be a Scientist! Classroom Activities: • Observing o As a class, decide on a habitat to observe. Choose a habitat that would be easy to visit on several different occasions (the school yard, a local park, a backyard pond, etc.) Keep a nature journal on the life in that habitat, and don’t forget smaller animals like insects as well as plant life when you observe your habitat! Try to observe the habitat during different seasons. Use digital cameras to document changes in your habitat. For a great resource on helping students to create nature journals, check out Claire Walker Leslie and Charles E. Roth’s Keeping a Nature Journal: Discovering a Whole New Way of Seeing the World Around You. • Classification o Practice the skills necessary for classification by giving small groups of students easily recognized objects (plastic animals, differently shaped beads, etc.) Encourage your students to group the objects by observable features: things they can see, hear, smell, or feel. They will be surprised by how much they have previously missed with these common objects. Have them group them into two groupings or as many as they can identify. Practice grouping the same items different ways. • Measuring and Recording o Discuss with the students the importance of scientists being able to share what they have learned with other scientists. Why is it important to accurately measure and record what they observe? What are some ways to “measure” something? (Length, volume, weight, temperature, coloration, speed, etc.) What are some ways to “record” what they observe? (words, numbers, photographs, charts, drawings, etc.) § Give each student a piece of string. The strings should be various lengths. How would the students measure the length of the string without using a ruler? Allow the students to experiment with different ways of measuring the length of their strings. Have them write down the length using their own measurements and their names on a piece of paper. Mix up their measurements (but keep the strings with their original owners), and pass them out to different students. Have them draw a line as long as they think the described string would be. Give the papers back to their original owners. How did they do? Why would it be important to use measurements like millimeters and inches when describing scientific discoveries? § Fill a large glass with water and add a fizzing antacid tablet. Ask the students to observe it carefully. If they wanted to describe what happened as precisely as possible, how would they do it? Try out different ways to record the event. Draw a picture, time it, videotape it, and count bubbles. Challenge the students to describe the event in as many ways as they can. Do it again with another event like a toy car going down a ramp or a balloon inflating and deflating. Homework Assignments: • Travels with Lil' Leidy o When Joseph Leidy was a young boy in the early 19th century, he was fascinated with the world around him. He collected plants, rocks, and shells. He spent time studying and drawing the world around him. Have your students research life in the 1800s. How would young Joseph's life have been different than the students' lives? Give each student a “Lil' Leidy” to take with them on their own scientific endeavors. Interdisciplinary Activities • Scientist Drawings o Give each student a blank piece of paper and drawing implements. Ask them to draw a picture of a scientist. They can also choose to write a description of a scientist. Compare the renderings. What are some common features of what the students drew? Are the pictures overwhelmingly male? Are they wearing glasses and a lab coat? Are they in the field or the lab? What are some words they would use to describe these individuals? Are these realistic portrayals of scientists? Give each student a scientist from history or a modern scientist to study. (Check out the Academy's website for information about Dr. Ruth Patrick for a great place to start! http://www.ansp.org/research/pcer/rp/index.php) Have them revisit their original drawings. Have they changed what they think it takes to be a scientist? Class Projects • Class Collections o Give each student the task of gathering objects for your collection. You can simply have them collect things that are interesting to them or be more specific in the themes (things from nature, objects that show the colors of the rainbow, etc.) After the collection period, the class must work together to curate their collection. Talk about how to classify objects. Have the students closely observe the objects and group them by size, shape, and color. Are there other ways that they would group their objects together? Put together a display, invite other classes, and have your student curators give tours explaining why they arranged their displays the way they did. Joe on the Go: Paleontology Rocks Classroom Activities: • Puzzling Fossils o Talk about the process of “putting together” a dinosaur. What do the students think would be difficult about finding fossils and putting them together? Take a few puzzles with only a few pieces and remove important pieces like edges, corners, and distinct parts. Give small groups of students the prepared piles of pieces but not the missing pieces or the box lid from the puzzle, and ask them to put the puzzle together. Stop them while they are working. What problems are they facing? Talk about how those are some of the same problems a paleontologist might face in trying to put together a skeleton. What sorts of things might help their process? In paleontology, scientists often compare the pieces they find with other animals (comparative biology). Give them the lids from the puzzles. Stop them again. What problems are they facing now? There are missing pieces! Talk about how this was certainly the case when Hadrosaurus foulkii was discovered and is still a challenge with new discoveries today! • Fossils in the field o See attached “Dig Mapping” activity to see how the process of fossil hunting has changed since Hadrosaurus foulkii was found on a farm! • Dinosaur Dissection o Ask your students to describe Tyrannosaurus rex. What did it look like? How did it hunt? How did it move? How do we know anything about an animal that was extinct well before any human was around? Of course, paleontologists look at fossils to begin to describe this extinct animal. That only tells part of the story. Talk about how scientists need to look at animals that are still around today to fill in the gaps left by fossil remains. Fossils give us a great starting point, but to “flesh out” dinosaurs in pictures and models and to start thinking about possible behaviors we must look at animals that we can observe in more detail because they are still alive. What better place to start than the dinosaurs’ closest living relatives: birds? § If classroom policies allow, instruct small groups of students to dissect uncooked chicken wings in order to look closely at how muscle attaches to bone and how the bones work together to move the wing. At each stage, ask students to draw what they observe and take notes on the specimen. Using dissection scissors (or small, sharp personal hygiene scissors) remove the skin from the wings. What do the students observe about the skin? How well was it attached? How did it react to pulling and cutting? Then, using dissection probes (or standard toothpicks), take note of how the muscles are attached to the bone.