 classroom activities scientific claims video review scientific claims video review goals critically review the scientific claims of other student scientists for clarity and for validity practice constructive criticism objectives students will review scientific claims videos of other student scientists students will construct and post to vimeo a constructive response to the claim and or reasoning for three other research groups materials scientific claims video review worksheet computer with internet access place of this lesson in project sequence this video sharing must happen after other groups have developed their scientific claims and posted their claim videos lesson duration approximately 80 minutes  note depending on the students and the amount of time available you can  1  lead the students in a discussion of what they need to include to respond to other people s videos constructively  2  give the student groups the review form and have them review and write a response 3  have students use the review form and give them a prewritten response script  introduction explain the goal of this is to help these other students improve streamline and or clarify their claim their reasoning and the evidence they are going to use to back up their claim practicing scientists have their work reviewed at every stage of a research project when they propose the project as they work through it and when they write up or present results being able to compose a constructive review and to respond to others reviews is a critical skill for scientists what does constructive criticism look and sound like solicit ideas and set some class ground rules scientists use the term review for constructive criticism we re going to watch a video together and work through this process then you ll split into your groups to review three videos from other classes you will have a worksheet to do this review in your groups but let s do one without using the worksheet  note  some guidelines for giving constructive criticism include making the criticism relevant and appropriate to the context describing the claim reasoning or evidence carefully and accurately first offering both positive and negative criticism whenever possible being specific and explaining how to improve video viewing and discussion watch a video as a class and begin the discussion    claim   can someone restate this group s claim in their own words anyone want to add on to that does everyone agree with name of your student s restatement yes move on no don t agree could you add on or restate if restate in what way are these two statements different if need be go through clarifying process again or what i think i hear you saying is articulate the differences between the two statements how confident do you feel that that is what this group is saying what can you say to this group about their claim  do the same for background justification and evidence  reasoning   can someone restate this group s reasoning in their own words anyone want to add on to that does everyone agree with name of your student s restatement yes move on no don t agree could you add on or restate if restate in what way are these two statements different if need be go through clarifying process again or what i think i hear you saying is articulate the differences between the two statements how confident do you feel that that is what this group is saying what can you say to this group about their reasoning  evidence   can someone restate what this group is going to use for evidence anyone want to add on to that does everyone agree with what name of your student said yes move on no don t agree could you add on or restate if restate in what way are these two statements different if need be go through clarifying process again or what i think i hear you saying is articulate the differences between the two statements will this evidence support this claim is there something missing or different that you can recommend to this group about their evidence what can you say to this group about the evidence that they ll be using crafting a comment response ask  what can we say to this group solicit input suggest four sentences an opening sentence make this nice specific and complimentary a sentence about their claim we did not understand your claim but we think you said is this right we understood your claim about have them restate the claim in their own words a sentence about the reasoning we did not understand your reasoning but we think you said is this right or we did not understand your reasoning but some reasons that might back up your claim are we understood your reasoning that have them restate the reasoning in their own words a sentence about the evidence we did not understand how the evidence will support your claim could you explain or we did not understand your evidence but some other evidence likemight back up your claim we understand the evidence that you re going to use have them restate the reasoning in their own words draw axes for a graph on the board and have the students as a group draw a hypothetical graph of what the data will look like if the data supports the claim group work in groups  as a group with one person recording review the videos of three other groups groups can be from same school but not the same class preferably not the same teacher each group fills out a scientific claims video review worksheet for each group  writing a response  have students use their scientific claims video review worksheet to write a response to post if there is time review the comments before posting post comments to vimeo followup question ask  are there any things about your own claims reasoning or evidence that you want to modify or streamline after reviewing the claims of other scientists worksheet for lesson  this worksheet is available here  answer questions about the video circle one provide additional feedback 1 do the group members identify themselves yes no if yes are the introductions easy to understand 2 do the group members identify the school that they come from yes no if yes what school are they from 3 does the group state their claim yes no if no indicate in your comments that the claim is unstated if yes restate their claim here 4 is that claim reasonable  note this doesn t mean you think it s right just that it is possible and makes sense in the way that they are thinking about how the world works  yes no if no let them know in your r eview that the claim as stated is not reasonable and explain why if yes include as a comment in your re view 5 does the group tell you why they made their claim yes no if no ask them to clarify in your review if yes explain their reasoning 7 is the reasoning behind their claim sound yes no if no include in your r eview what other reason s can they use to make their claim if yes include as a comment in your re view 8 does the group tell you what evidence they would need to support their claim yes no if no in your review suggest some evidence that would support their claim if yes what is the evidence 9 is the evidence something that we can obtain from the data currently available to us or that the class is collecting now yes no if no in your review suggest some evidence they could use that is available in order to support their claim or tell them that we cannot get the evidence to test their claim if you are unsure if the data are available ask the group if they have access to the data if yes include as a comment in your re view using this feedback form write a constructive review of this group s claim and evidence and post it to vimeo use this space to create a hypothetical graph of what this group s data will look like if the data supports their claim label the axes   mercury in watersheds hypothesis classroom activity  