Card Game for the Scientific Method

Today we talked pedagogy. (Just saying that in a sentence makes me feel all intellectual.) We were looking at the different ways to approach a lesson with various types of entry points, analogies, and representations, based on the work of a psychologist named Howard Gardner. And then we got to do some mock lesson plans for practice.

Alex and I worked together, and we decided to thinking about teaching the scientific method and its limitations. She had the most brilliant illustration for teaching the scientific method. You divide the kids into groups and deal out a deck of cards. Then you go around and get each group to offer you a card in turn. You either accept or reject the card, and the kids have to figure out what the pattern is that determines whether or not you'll accept the card. It's lines up to the scientific method quite well: you look at the cards taken so far (observation), make a guess as to a potential pattern (hypothesis), offer the teacher a card in line with that supposed pattern (experiment) and see if the teacher accepts or rejects the card (results). If the teacher rejects the card, you go back and form a new hypothesis; if the teacher repeatedly accepts your cards, then you've got the pattern (conclusions). And to make it even better, you can use modifications of this to show the scientific method's reliance on induction and the assumption of regularity - a very cool illustration indeed.