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Scientific events may instigate a cascade of consequences or effects on science, technology and society. Identifying the effects of significant scientific occurrences may cause students to think through the concepts underlying the science topic. The answer to the common question " What would happen if _________?" will spur students into thinking about consequential events and the impact of science on our everyday lives. |
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Have students bring in a newspaper article about a particular topic in science. List the topics of the articles on the board as the students give a 30 second topic description. Some of the topics will be the same. Choose 5 or 6 of the most popular topics from the list on the board. Place students in 5 or 6 groups by their choice of topic. Assign a topic team leader. Each topic team will discuss their topic and determine the some consequences of some event happening that is related to the topic. They should fill in the blank in the following sentence: "What would happen if __________?" The word or words chosen should be the "cause" in a direct cause/effect issue mentioned in the article. The students will look at the consequences or effects by constructing a futures wheel. Hand out index cards to each member of each topic team. Within each team, each student should write on the card the first thing that comes to mind when they think of their topic question; "What would happen if _______?" They should place their answer on the top lines on the index card. Then they should draw an arrow pointing downward under their response. All students within a topic team will then exchange cards, or pass them to the right. The students should then look at the response on the new card and think of what would happen next. The next consequence or effect should be written on the index card below the arrow. Again, the student should draw an arrow under their response and hand the card to someone else in the group, or pass to the right. The process continues with each student writing down their response to the last consequence. The topic team leader will then collect all the cards and construct the futures wheel. The center of the wheel is the question "What would happen if _______?" This question is placed in a circle in the center of a large sheet of paper. |
The first responses from each card are then placed in circles surrounding the center with one line connecting the circle to the center. If some of the responses are the same, only represent them in one circle. The second responses on each card are then placed in circles further to the outside and connected with two lines to the consequence before it. At this point, some of the responses may be the same again, so a circle may be connected to one or more of the circles from the first response. All second responses are connected by two lines. All third responses are connected with three lines. Place the third responses in circles of their own in the outermost part of the paper and connect to the consequences before them. The topic team will have completed a Futures Wheel that visually represents their thoughts and conceptions about the consequences of a scientific event. See an example of a Futures Wheel on Biological Warfare. Futures Wheels may be used as a topic initiator, to expose prior knowledge and beliefs. They may also be used as an indicator of knowledge construction and the unraveling of misconceptions when used towards the end of the unit. For Variation: The teacher may select newspaper articles based on the next science topic to be covered in class. Each team would receive one newspaper article. The "If" questions developed by each team may be different, but will reflect different issues and perspectives within the same topic.
Adapted from the New York Department of Education from "Futures Wheel", Curriculum Grades 4-8 (St. Paul, MN: The Acid Rain Foundation, Inc. 1985) |
*Assessing Prior Knowledge. *Prediction skills *Creative thinking *Cognitive skills: association *Interdisciplinary-all disciplines may be involved *Inquiry Building |