======Pieces of the Story======


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**Alternative titles:** Science as a Puzzle
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====Summary====                   
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====Procedure====  
  - Cut a book roughly in half, separating pages.  
  - Randomly distribute individual pages among students.  
  - Ask each student to read their page and identify key characters, places, thoughts, or ideas.  
  - Record the shared details for the class to see.  
  - Once most students have contributed, challenge the class to piece together a possible storyline.  
  - Emphasize the analogy to scientific research, where only fragments of information are available and scientists must build models and explanations from them.



====Links==== 
📄 BOOK DEMO - Ashley Parker (Page 8): [[https://www.unco.edu/nhs/science/pdf/demos/2004_CSC.pdf]]\\


====Variations====
  * Withhold some pages of the book as an analogy to missing data.
  * Use different genres of books to compare how easy or difficult it is to reconstruct a story.  
  * Have small groups work on different books and then present their “scientific story reconstruction” to the class.  
  * Combine this demo with real scientific data sets, such as fossil records or astronomical observations, to reinforce the connection.



====Safety Precautions====
  * No physical hazards are present.




====Questions to Consider====
  * How is piecing together a story from scattered pages similar to how scientists work? (Scientists rarely have the full picture and must infer patterns from limited evidence.)  
  * What are the risks of drawing conclusions from incomplete information? (Possibility of misinterpretation or bias.)  
  * How does this activity illustrate the importance of collaboration in science? (Pooling individual observations creates a more complete understanding.)  
  * Can scientific “stories” change over time as new pages—or data—are discovered? (Yes, scientific knowledge evolves as new evidence fills in missing pieces.)