Traits: Two Models

Students choose which of two models they agree with and explain their thinking. The purpose is to get students' first impressions about traits and understand their reasoning.

1. Before you begin, you may wish to discuss models. Models are often physical representations or diagrams, but they can also be ideas expressed in words.
2. Give each student a copy. Working individually, students should fill out questions 1 & 2 only.
3. Collect the copies, but don’t grade them.
4. Return the copies to students as part of Weigh the Evidence, the module’s final activity.

Many students intuitively know the answer — but they may not have the right reasons for the answer. The “Explain your thinking” part is still important both for probing students' thinking and for practice with Constructing Explanations.

Copies

Traits Models (pdf) — Make one per student

The materials on this page are derivatives of the MEL Teaching Resources Plausibility Ratings tasks (accessed June 17, 2021), developed as part of The MEL Project by the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) at Carlton College, and licensed under Creative Commons Non-Commercial Share Alike 3.0.

Materials on this page are offered under a Creative Commons license Non-Commercial Share Alike 3.0