2005 Merit Winner
Lesson Plan
Pam Stryker
Barton Creek Elementary
Austin, Texas
CSI, Second Grade Style
Lesson Overview
The scene is set:
- A small pile of white powder just inside the classroom
door,
- Footprints made from the same white substance leading to a
small white box covered with fingerprints,
- A small fiber attached to the box, and
- A note saturated with a perfume smell and signed with a
lipstick kiss:
Dear Ms. Stryker's Class,
I've been watching you this year. You always walk so quietly in
the hall and are so considerate to others in the school. I wanted
to surprise you with a treat. Please let me know if you enjoyed
it.
No signature … just a kiss.
And what's inside the box? Cookies!
The mystery begins with a flurry of excitement.
"What a mess!" "Careful, don't track it in." "Look, a box!
What's inside? A note!" "I bet Mrs. Linnecki brought them!" "My mom
makes cookies like these!" "Mrs. Styrker did it." "Look at her
shoes … no not her. I wonder who it was."
The air is buzzing with enthusiasm.
Through a series of hands-on labs and classroom activities, this
12-day unit is designed to involve second or third grade students
in the processes of science: observing, measuring, collecting data,
creating charts and tables, predicting, analyzing, and generalizing
from the data collected. It is a unit that naturally develops
inquiry skills with the students constantly asking "what if" and
immediately testing their ideas. In addition, the students learn to
use many tools of science: hand magnifiers, microscopes, tape
measures, and rulers.
TEKS Learning Objectives:
The student conducts classroom investigations following school
safety procedures. The student is expected to:
- Demonstrate safe practices during classroom and field
investigations, and
- Learn how to use and conserve resources and dispose of
materials.
The student develops abilities necessary to do scientific
inquiry in the field and the classroom. The student is expected
to:
- Ask questions about objects and events,
- Plan and conduct simple descriptive investigations,
- Compare results of investigations with what students and
scientists know about the world,
- Gather information using simple equipment and tools to extend
the senses,
- Construct reasonable explanations and draw conclusions using
information and prior knowledge, and
- Communicate explanations about investigations.
The student knows that information and critical thinking are
used in making decisions. The student is expected to:
- Make decisions using information,
- Discuss and justify the merits of decisions, and
- Explain a problem in his or her own words and identify a task
and solution related to the problem.
The student uses age-appropriate tools and models to verify that
objects and parts of objects can be observed, described, and
measured. The student is expected to:
- Collect information using tools including rulers, meter
sticks, hand lenses, and computers, and
- Compare objects and parts of objects, using standard and
nonstandard units;
The student knows that objects and events have properties and
patterns. The student is expected to:
- Classify and sequence objects and events based on properties
and patterns, and
- Identify, predict, replicate, and create patterns including
those seen in charts, graphs, and numbers.
The student knows that many types of change occur. The student
is expected to observe, measure, record, analyze, predict, and
illustrate changes in size, color, position, quantity, and
movement.
Methods of Implementation
Phase One
As the mystery unfolds, the students photograph, collect, and
observe the evidence at the scene, then predict what each piece
could imply about the person who brought the mysterious box of
cookies. They create a possible suspect description and begin their
list of suspects. After shared reading of two children's detective
picture books, the students discuss what a detective is, does, and
thinks. Then they draw a detective, adding the tools that he or she
would need and cartoon-like thought bubbles showing what the
detective might think or ask. When someone is available, we have
had a guest speaker from a local law enforcement agency talk about
crime scene investigation.
Phase Two
For the next seven days, the students develop their skills as
forensic scientists through a series of labs that enable them to
analyze the evidence further. After each lab, the students are
responsible for filling in a lab journal describing what they did
in the lab, what they discovered, and how that will help them solve
the mystery.
-
Fingerprint Lab.
They explore and record their own fingerprints and learn to
identify traditional fingerprint patterns.
-
Scent Lab.
While practicing the wafting method to safely smell a
substance, they match scents and identify those that are
familiar.
-
Footprint/Lip Print Lab.
They take shoe rubbings and lipstick lip prints, measure
each, describe the patterns, and compare them.
-
Chromatography Lab.
Using a small piece of the writing from the original note,
the students compare it to samples of other types of black inks.
They discover through the chromatography lab that each type of
ink has a different color pattern when water is allowed to slowly
separate the ink into its different components.
-
Handwriting Analysis Lab.
Handwriting analysis happens daily in a second grade
classroom, each time students forget to put their names on their
papers. For this lab, the students get into small groups. Each
student writes a simple sentence on a strip of paper and does not
write his or her name on it. Then the students select one of
their lab reports that has been labeled with their name. Each
group scrambles the sentences and lab reports and passes them to
another group that will match them based on handwriting. The
groups then discuss and make a list of the characteristics that
helped them match the handwriting samples.
-
Fibers Lab.
They discover that microscopes and hand magnifiers become
useful tools when observing, drawing, and describing different
treads and yarns.
-
Detective Investigation Kits.
The final day of detective school is used to plan and
collect all the tools that they will need in their investigation
for their suspects: tape, pencil, index card, record sheet for
fingerprinting, crayon, paper for shoe print rubbing, baggies to
collect fibers and tissues with favorite perfume or cologne, and
other clues. They then make a detective case from a paper bag to
store all that they need.
Phase Three
Following the detective school, students begin to narrow down
the list of suspects, and practice and schedule the suspect
interviews. The next day, investigation teams of three or
four are off to collect the data from the final list of suspects.
They return and compare their data to the actual evidence. This is
recorded on a large class matrix. Finally, a likely suspect emerges
as they review the matrix. The team that investigated that suspect
verifies that he or she brought the cookies. Finally, the students
write letters to thank all suspects for their involvement and
especially to thank the one who brought the cookies. Mystery solved
after about 12 exciting days of work!
The Mystery Unit Curriculum Integration
- As reading groups read mysteries, comprehension focuses on
sequencing, implied meanings, cause and effect, and main idea -
all thinking skills any good detective must have.
- Writing topics evolve naturally with descriptions of who they
suspect and why, descriptions of the scene, and creations of
their own mysteries or a new ending to the mysteries they are
reading. Finally, letters are written to thank all the suspects
for their time.
- Technology is integrated throughout the unit. The students
take digital pictures of all the evidence and mystery scene. They
create wanted posters for the suspect that they think is most
likely to have delivered the cookies, learning how to add a
picture of the suspect from a file on the server. They design and
print business cards to use when they interview the suspect.
- Math activities focus on patterns, missing numbers, story
problems, and problem solving. Students work on finding the
relevant information in a problem and eliminating the distracting
factors.
Materials Used
Per group of four:
- Finger Print Lab: four sharpened pencils, four index
cards, roll of clear tape, and fingerprint record
sheet.
- Fiber Lab: three-inch piece of four different fibers taped to
index card, colored pencils, microscope, magnifying lenses, and
record sheet.
- Scent Lab: 12 film canisters labeled A-F and 1-6, 12 cotton
balls, six scents, and record sheet.
- Handwriting Lab: four samples of student writing, four strips
of lined paper, and record sheet.
- Chromatography Lab: four wide-mouth plastic cups, 1x 4-inch
strips of newsprint, four different brands of black markers,
clear tape, four pencils, and record sheet.
- Footprint/Lip Print Lab: four crayons (unwrapped), eight
sheets of white paper, lipstick, index cards, four cotton swabs,
and record sheet.
Suspect matrix record chart - 3 x 5 foot chart paper.
Manila paper for detective pictures.
Evaluation Tool
Student evaluations are based on their detective lab folder,
data collection from their suspect, and evaluation of that data.
Each lab has two components: a record sheet and a journal sheet.
Accuracy and neatness of recording data are evaluated on the record
sheet, while detail in the description of the lab and
reasonableness in what they discovered is evaluated on the lab
journal sheets. Each sheet is worth five points for a total of 70
points. The data collected from the suspect and the conclusion
drawn from that data account for an additional 30 points, totaling
100 points. In addition, teacher observation is a strong component
of the evaluation; the teacher looks for the students' mastery of
the process skills as well as their correct and safe use of
materials in a lab. These observations are kept as anecdotal
records and shared with the parents on the report cards.
Unit Effectiveness
This unit combines good science investigation with the
excitement of a mystery. Students are mentally engaged from the
onset. Their science labs and learning have a real-life connection.
They are observing everyone in the school as possible suspects.
They tell their families about what they have discovered daily.
Communication, discovery, and reasoning are all woven into a plot
of the TEKS that they must master. The best effect: They are so
involved that there are few classroom management problems. "Is
science really over? That was a short time!"
Resources
The Lawrence Hall of Science GEMS teacher guide, Mystery
Festival, was the inspiration for creating the unit, although
this unit is very different from the ones GEMS presents.
Literature connections:
-
Detective LaRue Letters From the Investigation
, Mark Teague
-
The Web Files
, Margie Palatinin and Richard Egielski