I. Gallery Walk: Rethinking the Draw-A-Scientist Test
- Description & Objective: Students explore common cultural images of scientists by drawing their own mental picture and discussing it with peers. They then create self-portraits as scientists, imagining themselves in STEM roles, followed by a gallery walk to observe diverse identities. Finally, students reflect on how their perceptions of scientists compare to their own scientific identities and what this reveals about inclusion in STEM. The objective of this activity is to challenge stereotypes about what scientists look like and foster students’ sense of belonging in STEM by encouraging them to envision themselves as active participants in scientific communities.
- Opening Discussion: In small groups, discuss the question: What do scientists look like? Consider clothing, tools, workspaces, and demeanor. Draw on images you’ve seen in media, books, or everyday life.
- Initial Drawing: Individually, create a quick drawing of “a scientist” based on your current mental image. This can be realistic or symbolic.
- Classroom Discussion: Share and compare your drawings. What patterns do you notice? What kinds of scientists did you draw? Do certain items, clothing styles, or settings appear repeatedly? Why might that be? Did your scientist work alone or with others? Was your scientist indoors, outdoors, or in another type of space? What gender, race, or age did your scientist appear to be? Did you think about this while drawing? Where do you think the images or ideas you drew came from (i.e. TV, books, school, personal experience)? Do you think your drawing represents most scientists in the real world?
- Self-Portrait as Scientist: Now draw yourself as a scientist. Think about what you’d be wearing, what tools you’d use, where you’d be, and what kind of work you’d be doing.
- Gallery Walk: Hang the student self-portraits around the classroom. Students walk around to see the variety of roles, settings, and identities represented.
- Reflection: Write a short paragraph reflecting on how your self-portrait compares to your original drawing of “a scientist.” What changed? What stayed the same? How does imagining yourself as a scientist change the way you think about science or your place in it? How can our classroom environment support everyone feeling like they belong in science?
II. Role Play: SI Units & the French Revolution
- Description & Objective: Students will explore the importance of standardized units of measurement by imagining themselves as servants in Versailles before the French Revolution, when units varied widely between regions and trades. Embodying these roles, students grasp why uniform measurement systems like SI units were essential for science and society. They will discover how inconsistent measurements could lead to mistakes, waste, or conflict, and why the eventual move toward unit standardization was transformative for work, trade, and science. Through roleplay, students will understand the historical origins of the metric system and relate standardized measurement to practical daily tasks through role play.
- Historical Context: In 18th-century France, measurement was a chaotic system with an estimated over two hundred fifty thousand different units in use across the country. Different towns and regions measured length, weight, and volume in their own ways; a "pound" in one area might not equal a "pound" in another. On top of this, rulers and local authorities issued decrees that frequently changed or added to the array of measurement standards, deepening the confusion and amplifying inconsistencies. For the servants of Versailles, these inconsistencies could cause real problems in their daily tasks.
- Roles:
- Servant (General Household Duties): Performs a variety of tasks such as cleaning, organizing, and assisting other staff, often using measurements for quantities like water or cleaning supplies.
- Gardener: Tends to the gardens by planting, watering, and pruning, measuring soil, water, and plant spacing to maintain the grounds.
- Tailor: Creates and alters clothing and uniforms, using precise measurements of fabric and body dimensions.
- Cook: Prepares meals by following recipes that require careful measurement of ingredients for taste and consistency.
- Cobbler: Repairs and makes shoes, measuring foot sizes and materials to ensure proper fit and durability.
- Stable Hand: Cares for horses, measuring feed and water to maintain their health and performance.
- Chambermaid: Cleans and maintains rooms, measuring linens and cleaning supplies to ensure proper use and presentation.
- Prompt: Assume the role of a servant working at the Palace of Versailles and describe how you use measurement units in your job. What tasks do you perform daily? What tools and materials do you use, and how do units of measurement help you carry out your work accurately?
III. Lab Equipment Scavenger Hunt
- Description & Objective: Students will explore and familiarize themselves with common laboratory equipment by locating, visually identifying, and inferring function based on appearance. This activity encourages observation skills, critical thinking, and vocabulary building. This activity builds foundational vocabulary and helps students connect tools to their scientific purposes.
- Prompt: Walk around the classroom and find each piece of lab equipment labeled with a letter on the lab benches. Write the letter next to the name of each object on your worksheet. Then below, write the correct name of the laboratory equipment pictured. On the back side of the worksheet, you will match each piece of equipment with its likely use by connecting the letters to a list of possible functions. Since many of you haven’t used this equipment before, it’s okay to make thoughtful guesses based on what the tools look like. As you work, I’ll be walking around to help you think about the shapes and features of the equipment and how those might relate to their uses.
IV. [Re]Designing a Laboratory Object
- Description & Objective: Students examine standard lab equipment used in a given experiment and identify potential limitations or challenges in its current design. Working individually or in small groups, they brainstorm and sketch modifications that could improve precision, efficiency, accessibility, or safety. By linking their scientific knowledge with engineering and problem-solving skills, students explore how design choices shape laboratory practice and influence experimental outcomes.
- Sample Redesign Prompts & Ideas: Given a common experiment, propose a redesign of a lab object to improve accuracy, safety, or usability.
- Design a pipette that can be easily used by visually impaired students by considering tactile or auditory feedback.
- Create a new version of tongs that improves grip and prevents burns when handling hot objects near open flames.
- Modify a beaker to reduce the risk of spills and improve handling for students with limited hand strength.
- Redesign a graduated cylinder to make reading measurements easier and more precise, perhaps with color-coded markings or a magnifying feature.
- Develop an improved lab coat with built-in features to enhance safety and comfort during experiments.
- Redesign goggles to include prescription lenses or magnifying features for students who wear glasses.
- Design lab goggles that fog less during experiments to improve visibility and fit different face shapes and sizes, ensuring a secure seal for all students.
V. CER Assessment (Claim-Evidence-Reasoning)
- Objective & Description: Students will carefully study a lab safety incident or image depicting unsafe conduct. They will identify the unsafe action and articulate their claim about the risk it poses. Using their knowledge of material properties (like fragility, flammability, or chemical reactivity) and classroom norms, students provide concrete evidence. Finally, they explain their reasoning, linking how the observed unsafe behavior could cause accidents or harm, thus demonstrating the importance of safety practices grounded in material understanding. Students will strengthen scientific communication by analyzing unsafe lab behaviors through the CER framework.
- Prompt: Examine the provided lab safety scenario and write a clear CER paragraph. Make a claim about what behavior is unsafe, support it with evidence from your understanding of lab materials and classroom safety rules, and explain why this behavior endangers students, demonstrating how their understanding of materials directly informs lab safety and conduct.
VI. Object Study Session: An Approach to Studying Tools and Technology
- Objective & Description: Central to this unit’s teaching strategies is the use of an object-centered analysis, which invites students to study lab tools and materials not simply as inert instruments, but as active participants in scientific practice. To guide this exploration, students employ art historian Jules Prown’s three-step framework: Description, Deduction, and Speculation.31 This method, originally developed in material culture studies, supports close observation and critical thinking about objects. As Prown explains, “We have been taught to retrieve information in abstract form, words and numbers, but most of us are functionally illiterate when it comes to interpreting information encoded in objects.”32 By following these stages in order, Prown’s framework guides learners from objective observation to critical reflection, enabling a richer understanding of material culture that bridges science, history, and culture.
- Description: Look closely and describe only what you see.Focus on color, texture, shape, materials, and condition. Students consider questions like: What materials seem to be used in this object? What colors, textures, or shapes stand out? Does anything look worn, cracked, faded, preserved, or aged? Don’t guess or assume; just observe.
- Deduction: Use your observations and science knowledge to figure out how the object was made or used.Students consider questions like: What processes might have been involved in making this object? How do you think the object has changed over time, chemically or physically? Based on the shape and form of the object, what could its function be?
- Speculation: Ask deeper questions and make connections.Students consider questions like: How does this tool reflect technological advancements or safety priorities? What does its design say about the values or knowledge of the scientific community that uses it? Why were these materials used? What can this object tell us about the people who made it?
Object Study Session Case: Graduated Cylinders and the Prown Method
Figure 3: Graduated Cylinders. Four glass graduated cylinders of various sizes that measure from left to right 10, 25, 50 and 100 milliliters (mL). 33
To help students internalize the steps of Prown’s object-centered analysis, this unit includes a focused case study comparing two laboratory staples: glass and plastic graduated cylinders of different sizes (see Figure 3). These tools are deceptively simple, yet they embody layers of scientific, historical, and cultural meaning. By applying Prown’s Method to these objects, students move beyond seeing lab equipment as neutral or utilitarian, instead recognizing how design, material, and context shape practice and behavior.34 This case study models the kind of deep observational and critical thinking this unit cultivates, bridging scientific content with material literacy.
Description invites students to carefully observe the graduated cylinder. They examine the tall, narrow, cylindrical shape typical of graduated cylinders, noting the smooth, transparent surfaces. There is a small pouring lip at the top and a foot at the bottom. By considering size and the precise measurement markings etched along the side, students think about volume capacity.
Moving to Deduction, students infer how the aforementioned physical properties affect the cylinder’s function and the behaviors they encourage in the laboratory. For example, the glass cylinder’s transparency allows for clear, accurate reading of liquid levels, while its fragile nature demands careful handling to avoid breakage or injury. In contrast, the plastic cylinder, often more durable and lightweight, may be favored for certain tasks where safety and ease of use are prioritized. The narrow shape of both cylinders promotes precise measurement but also requires scientists to pour liquids cautiously, reducing the risk of spills especially when handling hazardous chemicals. The foot or base of each graduated cylinder provides stability and helps prevent tipping. On the glass cylinder, this foot may be fused as a single piece, often heavier to anchor the tall, narrow vessel. By comparing the bases, students begin to understand how even subtle design features, such as the width, weight, and texture of the foot, contribute to the object’s functionality. These observations, though seemingly mundane, lay the groundwork for deeper inferences about safety, balance, and laboratory use.
In the Speculation phase, students reflect on the broader cultural and historical significance of these graduated cylinders. Speculation on the transition from glass to plastic materials reflects not only evolving safety concerns and technological progress within laboratory environments, but also economic considerations. While glass has long been valued for its clarity, heat resistance, and chemical inertness, it is expensive to produce and easily breakable. The adoption of durable plastic polymers represents a shift toward affordability, disposability, and risk reduction, particularly in educational or high-throughput lab settings. This variation embodies changing priorities, balancing accuracy and sustainability with durability and risk management. The graduated cylinder becomes a lens through which students explore not only laboratory design but the shifting material realities of science itself.
Moreover, students can also speculate about how the graduated cylinder’s standardized markings along its side embody the scientific values of precision and reproducibility. These uniform measurement increments are not arbitrary; they reflect a long history of efforts to create consistent and reliable standards in science. Students can connect this to the development of the International System of Units (SI), which emerged after the French Revolution as a response to the need for universal, standardized measurements that could be used across countries and disciplines.35 This standardization revolutionized scientific practice by enabling scientists worldwide to replicate experiments and share data with confidence.
The graduated cylinder, therefore, is more than a measuring tool; all laboratory equipment are symbols of the broader cultural and political movements that shaped modern science’s commitment to accuracy, collaboration, and trustworthiness. All laboratory equipment and protocols are living records of the ongoing negotiations between scientific needs, safety considerations, and technological possibilities. Thus, this object study session with the Prown Method helps students appreciate how scientific instruments carry with them histories of human cooperation and the pursuit of shared knowledge.
