Pieces of the Story

In this classroom activity, students each receive a random page from a cut-up book. They share the characters, ideas, and places from their page, and then the class works together to create a possible storyline. The demonstration illustrates how science often works with incomplete data to build larger explanations.

1. Cut a book roughly in half, separating pages.
2. Randomly distribute individual pages among students.
3. Ask each student to read their page and identify key characters, places, thoughts, or ideas.
4. Record the shared details for the class to see.
5. Once most students have contributed, challenge the class to piece together a possible storyline.
6. Emphasize the analogy to scientific research, where only fragments of information are available and scientists must build models and explanations from them.

📄 BOOK DEMO - Ashley Parker (Page 8): https://www.unco.edu/nhs/science/pdf/demos/2004_CSC.pdf

• Withhold some pages of the book as an analogy to missing data.
• Use different genres of books to compare how easy or difficult it is to reconstruct a story.
• Have small groups work on different books and then present their “scientific story reconstruction” to the class.
• Combine this demo with real scientific data sets, such as fossil records or astronomical observations, to reinforce the connection.

• No physical hazards are present.

• How is piecing together a story from scattered pages similar to how scientists work? (Scientists rarely have the full picture and must infer patterns from limited evidence.)
• What are the risks of drawing conclusions from incomplete information? (Possibility of misinterpretation or bias.)
• How does this activity illustrate the importance of collaboration in science? (Pooling individual observations creates a more complete understanding.)
• Can scientific “stories” change over time as new pages—or data—are discovered? (Yes, scientific knowledge evolves as new evidence fills in missing pieces.)