GEMS Science Summary 3/11/13

A Crime Within A Crime!

Our new unit started off with some mystery! Students were very excited to view the crime scene and get started piecing together details of what could have happened to our victim. So much so, that they began creating a story of what happened before we even walked into the room! We discussed how important it is to differentiate between evidence and inference...something that had to be repeated several times throughout the class as stories kept developing. Students spent several minutes surveying from outside the crime scene tape. We wrote down several of our observations, being careful not to infer our own ideas of what something might be. After we wrote a long list we realized we needed to go back and change that we observed “several drops of blood” to “several drops of red liquid”. Until we test them we don’t know for sure what they are! It’s amazing how we all quickly jump to our own conclusions.

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Students were then put in groups to analyze each item in their section of the crime scene. This is when another mystery reared its ugly head! Apparently the housekeeping staff had come in early that day and thrown away some of our evidence! Luckily I had taken photos of each section of the crime scene so students had something to go by. We will have to analyze the missing evidence at the beginning of class next week so we can get a full picture of what could have happened. (I did end up finding the missing evidence in the dumpster! Grrr…)

Next week we will also be learning more about who the suspects are and analyzing several fingerprints found at the scene. The students will begin to see how important it is to pay attention to details as we move one step closer to finding out who done it!