Piecing it all together

In this activity, students use different pieces of a jigsaw to work through a process of observation, discussion, collaboration and deduction to determine what the picture shows. The activity is designed to help students learn about the nature of science – in particular, the collaborative nature of science and the ways in which scientists work with evidence. The story of Joan Wiffen, our most prominent citizen scientist, is used as a context, as the pieces of evidence she discovered and how she connected the pieces into theories changed the way we think about the geological history of New Zealand.

Collaboration is an important aspect of current New Zealand scientific research. This whakataukī is about the value of collaboration:

Nā tō rourou, nā taku rourou ka ora ai te iwi.
With your food basket and my food basket, our people will flourish.

By the end of this activity, students should be able to:

• draw inferences and make predictions about the complete picture
• identify the value of working together and sharing information and ideas
• use the jigsaw as an analogy for explaining some of the important aspects of the nature of science such as collaboration, observation and inference.

Download the Word file (see link below) for:

• background information for teachers
• equipment list
• student instructions.