Discrepant Event Inquiry

Discrepant Event Inquiry

A philanthropistMedical doctorHusband of Julia WardAn educator of the handicappedA social reformer and an abolitionist First to advocate the inclusion of

handicapped children in public schools.

Samuel Gridley Howe 1801-1876

Description

Present students with a puzzling, paradoxical, or discrepant event or story.

Beginning of a lesson.Students should ask questions, pose

hypotheses, analyze and synthesize information to draw conclusions that will help them find the answer to the puzzle.

Purpose

Engage students in hypothesizing and working together to solve a puzzle.

Serves as a strategy for higher-order thinking and investing students in the content to come.

Application

Strategy is used to motivate students to begin thinking about a new theme, idea, or concept that you will deal with in the new lesson.

Overview of Discrepant Event Inquiry

Teaching strategy built around intellectual confrontation.

Students form, test, and evaluate hypotheses by asking the teacher questions that must be answerable with either a “yes” or a “no.”

Students make predictions.Students practice critical thinking as they

generate and evaluate questions and answers.

Overview continued

Students search own knowledge, recalling whatever they might already know about the subject, in hopes of finding clues.

Procedures

1) Develop and Present the Inquiry Teacher generates story or puzzle. The teacher identifies what component is to be

omitted for students to discover. Omitted component creates the story’s mystery. Present the story or puzzle. Following the story or puzzle statement, a guiding

question is given in order to guide the students in their questioning.

Procedures

2) Students Question the Teacher To solve the puzzle the students must gain

additional information. They collect this data by asking the teacher questions that can only be answered by a “yes” or a “no.”

Appropriate questions are those that help one to “infer” an answer. Was this person male? Acceptable versus throwing out names randomly.

Procedures

3) Organize and Review Information Periodically pause and review key information

already discovered with the students. Have students process their ideas in small groups,

they need to talk it out.

Procedures

4) Formulate and Present an Answer At some point students will arrive at what they

believe is the correct answer and will want to offer it to the class.

Pause the class and have the students state their answer and then, before indicating the correctness of the answer, require the students to present the train of thought that produced the answer.

The Discrepant Event

In 1837, a young boy named John lived on a farm in a beautiful, mountainous, wooded area in eastern Tennessee. His family planted corn and raised animals for meat, milk and eggs. His father participated in the legislative branch of the government. His mother taught English in a local school. He had four brothers and three sisters. The family appeared happy and prosperous.

The Discrepant Event

In 1839, the family moved to a treeless, dry, flat prairie, where it was barely able to raise enough food to survive. Two of John’s brothers died and one of his sisters died. Unable to make a living farming, his father became a member of the legislature. His mother helped publish the local newspaper. John and his family missed their beautiful home in the mountains.

The Guiding Question

Why did John and his family leave their beautiful home in Tennessee and take such a hard journey only to settle in a hot and barren land?

Possible Questions

1) Did John’s dad move to get a better job?

2) Did they move because of a natural disaster?

3)Did they have to move?

Answer

John and his family were Cherokees relocated during the “Trail of Tears.”

A Whale of A Cow Tale

A Whale of A Cow Tale

Slaughterhouse personnel estimated, in the U.S., that 30,860,000 cattle and 1,353,000 calves

entered their doors during 1992. About 60-percent of the total weight of cattle and calves provided meat for people in the U.S. and for export, according to the animal rendering industry. However, the equivalent of about 11 billion pounds of cow parts or 12,885,200 cows disappeared.

Ishmael H. Melville, an ex-meat packer, now a butchery specialist at Moby Slaughterhouse Number 5,

said. Cows give us something to think about. Are they just hamburger? Cows don’t just surrender, you know. They’re fighters, right to the end. Cows are noble creatures. But, I sure love a good steak.

Eventually, if mad cow disease reaches the U.S. and it has in other countries, the missing 11 billion pounds of beef would pose a threat to our health. All beef products would pose a threat to the health of U.S. consumers.

The beef products would also pose a threat to the consumers in countries receiving exported beef.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Animal renderers in the U.S. are doing something with almost 13 billion pounds of missing cow parts, what?

PROBABLE SOLUTION

Every inedible part of a cow or calf is processed and sold for manufacture--items such as the following: plywood adhesives, synthetic motor oil, cosmetics, detergents, arthritis treatments, gel capsules for medicines, charcoal ash for sugar refining, bank notes, and asphalt paving.

The enormous growth in consumption of edible beef in the U.S. led to the formation of processes using previously unused waste for nonfood manufacturing.

Money is made on the animals heels, feet, bones, horns, and lungs. The missing cow parts (11 billion pounds) leave the renderers for shipment to industrial and pharmaceutical plants across the country.

POSSIBLE STUDENT HYPOTHESES

1. Cow parts wind up dumped into landfills, after preparation of beef for human consumption. The remaining cow parts are ignited to heat huge boilers that produce power for the rendering plant.

2. Inedible cow parts are shipped back to the cattle ranchers. Cattle ranchers sell the cattle to foreign renderers. The cattle ranchers must repay the American renderers for all the unused and wasted parts.

3. Renderers under report edible beef from rendered cattle to drive the wholesale beef prices higher.

4. The statistical reports issued by the renderers prove inaccurate because of disparate reporting systems in the various states.

5. Ishmael H. Melville was really an operative for radical vegetarian groups.

A Whale of a Cow Tale, FACT SHEET

1. Little waste, from cattle rendering, finds its way to landfills. Less than two-percent of the inedible cow parts reach landfills.

2. Some inedible cow parts fuel heating systems in rendering plants. Cow parts, as fuel, constitute less than one-percentage of the waste resulting from rendering.

3. Zero waste products return to ranchers for rebates. Some waste products return from rendering, for a price, to ranchers as feed for cattle and chickens.

4. Waste products for feed, in the U.S., remain illegal.

5. Renderers report statistics derived from rendered cattle of both edible and inedible products.

A Whale of a Cow Tale, REFERENCES and RESOURCES

Banner, M., 1995, Report of the Committee to Consider the Ethical Implications of Emerging Technologies in the Breeding of Farm Animals, HMSO.

Chase, S., March 22, 2001, Federal Agents Seize Vermont Flock, The Boston Globe.

Coe, Sue and Alexander Cockburn, illustrator, 1996, Dead Meat.

Cook, Robin, 1997, Toxin, Penguin Putnam Inc., NY.

A Whale of a Cow Tale, LINKS

http://www.defra.gov.uk/

http://www.telusplanet.net/public/jross/beefprod.htm

http://www.ca.uky.edu/agc/pubs/asc/asc136/asc136.htm

http://www.mad-cow.org/00/jan01_late.html

http://www.agclassroom.org/teacher/pdf/prairie/6_8/5_beyondBeef.pdf

http://www.defra.gov.uk/footandmouth/

http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/2001/010828b.htm

http://www.bseinquiry.gov.uk/

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/oa/bse/