TopicX Integrated

ScienceProcess SkillsI

LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of this topic, you should be able to: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. State the meaning of integrated science process skills; List the integrated science process skills; Describe the skill of space-time relationship; Describe the skill of interpreting data; and Describe the skill of defining operationally.

X INTRODUCTION
Teacher Amalina is teaching a Year 6 class. She is doing a demonstration using a toy car.

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Teacher Amalina Malini Teacher Amalina

: What do you observe? : The car is moving very fast down the slope. : Good, Malini! Children, what are the factors that are affecting the movement of the car? : I think the mass of the car. : Type of surface, teacher. : I think force that you applied to the car. : Good! Now each group choose a factor and investigate the effect it has on the distance that the car can travel.

Suran Mahani Patrick Teacher Amalina

What knowledge and skills must the students have in order for them to be able to investigate the problem given above? The students need to have integrated science process skills and manipulative skills so that they would be able to plan and carry out the experiment. We will be discussing the integrated science process skills in detail in this topic and the following topic.

4.1

WHAT ARE INTEGRATED SCIENCE PROCESS SKILLS?

SELF-CHECK 4.1

Take a few minutes to write down your definition of the integrated science process skills.

You have learned the basic science process skills in Topic 2 and 3. Do you still remember what they are? They are the skills that enable you to do science. In this unit we will be discussing the integrated science process skills. By combining these new skills with the basic science process skills, you will be able to carry out investigations and discover answers to the problems that you want to solve.

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What are the integrated science process skills? They are the skills that will lead you to experimenting. After acquiring these skills, you will have the tools to design your own investigations to test your ideas. The integrated science process skills are space-time relationships, interpreting data, defining operationally, identifying and controlling variables, formulating hypotheses and experimenting. We will discuss space-time relationships, interpreting data and defining operationally later in this topic. SELF-CHECK 4.2 List the integrated science process skills.

4.2

SPACE-TIME RELATIONSHIPS

This skill involves the ability to discern and describe directions, spatial arrangements, motion and speed, symmetry, and rate of change. It is a process to describe changes in parameter with time. Examples of parameters are location, direction, shape, size, volume, weight and mass of an object. It is important to master this skill because it shows us that changes occur in relation to time. Also it helps us to arrange events in chronological sequence. Lets say you see a car travelling on a road. You see that the car is travelling north when you first notice it, then after 10 minutes it turns right and travel for another 15 minutes at the same speed. It turns to the right again and accelerates and after travelling another 20 minutes it reaches its destination. When you describe how the car moves in that 45 minutes, you are using the skill of space-time relationships. Now look at the following pictures (see Figure 4.1). These are some of the pictures of the same girl over the years as she grows up.

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Figure 4.1: Pictures of the same girl over the years as she grows

How do these pictures differ? What aspects can you use to describe the changes that have occurred over the years as the girl grows? Size, height and mass are just some of the things or parameter that you can use to describe the changes that occurred over the years. Can you arrange the pictures chronologically so that they show how she grows? What we just discussed are also examples of the skill of space-time relationship. Study the following example and answer the questions that follow. Amin placed some ice cubes in a beaker of water. He measured the temperature of the water every 5 minutes. He also observed the state of the ice cubes throughout the activity. His observations are recorded in Table 4.1.

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Table 4.1: States of Ice Cubes and Temperature Time (min) 0 5 10 15 20 25 Observation Solid (ice cubes) Solid (ice cubes) Solid (ice cubes) Liquid (water) Liquid( water) Liquid (water) Temperature (oC) 0 0 0 1 4 8

(a) (b) (c)

Describe the relationship between temperature and time. Describe the state of ice cubes from beginning to the end of the activity. What is your conclusion?

Can you see that the ice cubes changed from solid to liquid and it took 25 minutes for the ice cubes to melt completely to liquid. At the same time, the temperature also changed over time. It increased as time increased. ACTIVITY 4.1 Describe the shape of the moon throughout the month as seen from Earth.

4.3

INTERPRETING DATA

In this section, we will learn about interpreting data.

4.3.1

What is Interpreting Data?

Interpreting data is essential in science and also of vital importance in other disciplines.

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We are constantly interpreting data when we watch the news on television, when we read maps, and when we look at photographs in newspapers or magazines. When do you interpret data? When you do an experiment to test your hypothesis, you collect data. After collecting the relevant data you analyse and interpret the data and determine whether your data supports your hypothesis. If the data supports your hypothesis then you can accept your hypothesis. What do you do when you are interpreting data? To interpret means you are making sense of the information. You look for patterns or trends in the data and you try to find a relationship between the variables. The data in this table shows the velocity of a car travelling over a period of time. Time (min) Velocity (km/h) 0 0 10 45 20 105

Can you see that the velocity increases? The two variables involved here are time and velocity. The relationship between them is as time increases the velocity also increases. A pupil made an observation of a particular tree in the garden. The following table shows her observations. Day 1 3 6 9 Number of Leaves 16 12 6 2

What happened to the number of leaves on this tree? It is decreasing, right? Why do you think this is happening to the tree?

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So you are interpreting when you are able to: (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) Identify trends and relationships in recorded measurements by suggesting links between these Make relevant inferences to get the conclusion Evaluate your investigation Answer questions related to the observations collected Establish scientific theory to draw and justify conclusions observations and

4.3.2
(a)

What Do We Interpret?

Data table A data table is one way to record your experimental result or observations. It is basically a visual representation of related facts arranged in rows and columns. Its purpose is to help sort, analyse and compare data gathered from a science experiment or research project. In most cases, the manipulated variable is in the left column, the responding variable with the different trials is in the next column, and the derived or calculated column (often average) is on the far right. Study the example of a data table as shown in Table 4.2.
Table 4.2: The Effect of Amount of Salt on Solubility Rate

Amount of Salt(g) 5 10 15 20 25

Time Taken to Dissolve (min) Trial 1 3.1 5.0 9.1 12.0 15.1 Trial 2 2.9 5.1 8.9 12.1 15.2 Trial 3 3.2 5.0 9.2 12.0 14.9

Average Length (min) 3 5 9 12 15

So what can you see from the table? Can you see that the reading for each trial differs? Why do they differ? Can you see that as the amount of salt increases, the time taken to dissolve them also increases?

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(b)

Pie Charts A pie chart is a circular chart in which thecircle is divided intosectors. Each sector visually represents an item in a data set to match the amount of the item as apercentageorfractionof the total data set. Thus, pie chartsare useful when you want to compare different parts of a whole amount. Study the pie chart shown in Figure 4.2 which shows which television channels people watch. What can you interpret from this pie chart?

Figure 4.2: Television channels people watch

Most people prefer to watch channel 1 compared to other channels. Do you agree with this conclusion? Why? (c) Bar Charts Bar charts show percentages in various categories and allow comparison between categories. The vertical scale is frequencies, relative frequencies or percentages and the horizontal scale shows categories.

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Figure 4.3: Television channels people watch

What conclusion can you make from this bar chart? Do you realise that the data is the same as in Figure 4.2? ACTIVITY 4.2
Do the following activities. Your monthly expenditure is shown below. Expenses Rent Food Fuel Leisure Utilities (a) (b) RM 550 700 150 100 350

Use the data in the table to draw a pie chart to display the information. Construct a bar chart to display the same information.

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(d)

Histograms Histograms show the frequency distributions of continuous variables. They are similar to bar charts, but they are drawn without gaps between the bars because the x-axis is used to represent the class intervals. They also have the following characteristics: The data is divided into non-overlapping intervals (usually from 5 to 15). Intervals generally have the same length. The number of values in each interval is counted (the class frequency). Sometimes relative frequencies or percentages are used. (Divide the cell total by the grand total). Rectangles are drawn over each interval. (The area of rectangle = relative frequency of the interval. If intervals are not all of the same length then the heights have to be scaled so that each area is proportional to the frequency for that interval).

Figure 4.4: Histogram showing heights for 30 people Source: www.analyzemath.com

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ACTIVITY 4.3 Study the histogram in Figure 4.4. What information can you get from the histogram?

SELF-CHECK 4.3 1. 2. What kind of data do we use to draw a histogram or a bar chart? What are continuous variables?

(e)

Line Graph Look at Figure 4.5(a) and 4.5(b). Both are examples of line graphs. But which graph do you commonly use in science? Yes, we usually use the graph in Figure 4.5(b).

Figure 4.5 (a): Line graph

Figure 4.5 (b): Line graph

In experiments we are investigating the effect of one variable upon another variable. The data collected during the experiment can then be drawn using the line graph to visually represent the relationship between the two variables. Thus to represent the type of relationship between the two variables we do not connect all the points on the graph but draw the best-fit line. This "smoothed" line does not have to touch all the data points, but they should at least be close to most of them.

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Why are not some of the points on the line drawn? These data represent error measurements that exist when we do the experiment. The error could be due to human or instrument error. Two examples of best-fit graph lines are shown in Figure 4.6. One is drawn correctly, the other is not. Study both and decide which one is correctly drawn.

Figure 4.6: Two examples of best-fit line graphs Source: http://staff.tuhsd.k12.az.us/gfoster/standard/bgraph2.htm

Suppose someone gave you a graph which showed the height of a plant at various times after planting (see Figure 4.7). How would you describe the shape of the curve in the graph? You might say: The growth curve shows that the plant sprouted on about the fifth day and grew in increasing amounts each week thereafter for six weeks. At that time, the plant was about 44 centimetres tall.

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Figure 4.7: Graph of plant growth for a period of six weeks

(f)

Interpreting Pictorial Data In Figure 4.7, you might have inferred that the increase in the plants height was due to the fact that the plant began to photosynthesise after growing for seven days. Suppose the pictorial data shown in Figure 4.8 had been recorded at the time the plants were growing. Does this information support your inference? Yes, it does. You can see that the plant has come out of the soils surface and leaves have formed a week after being planted. Interpreting data requires you to distinguish between observations, and the inferences you make about the observations. Erroneous notions may arise when inferences are accepted as certainty if they are not clearly labelled as inferences.

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Figure 4.8: Drawing of plant growth

ACTIVITY 4.4 Answer the following questions to test your understanding.

1.

The graph above represents a typical day of a teenager. Answer these questions: (a) What percentage of the day is spent watching TV? (b) How many hours are spent sleeping? (c) What activity takes up the least amount of time? (d) What activity takes up a quarter of the day? (e) What two activities take up 50% of the day? (f) What two activities take up 25% of the day?

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2.

(a) (b) (c) 3.

How many sets of data are represented? On approximately what calendar date does the graph begin? In what month does the graph reach its highest point?

(a) (b) (c)

How much rain fell in March of 1989? How much more rain fell in February of 1990 than in February of 1989? Which year had the most rainfall?

4.4

DEFINING OPERATIONALLY

You make measurements during an experiment. However, before making the measurements, you must decide how to measure each variable. So, when you specify a procedure for measuring a variable, you are making an operational definition. To operationally define a variable means to decide how they will be used in the experiment. Thus, an operational definition tells you what is observed and how it is measured. Different investigators may use different operational definitions for the same variable. For example, suppose an investigation was conducted to test the effects of Vitamin E on the endurance of a person. The variable endurance of a person could be defined in different ways, such as: (a) The number of hours a person could stay awake

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(b) (c)

The distance a person could run without stopping The number of jumping jacks a person could do

Each of the above statements is an operational definition of the same variable. Which one do you think is the best? Why is it important to define the variable operationally before doing an experiment? It is important because then you will know exactly what and how to observe and measure the variable. In doing so, you will be collecting the relevant data needed to answer your questions. Let us look at an example. You are experimenting the effect of temperature on the rate of solubility of a salt. How are you going to measure the rate of solubility of the salt in this experiment? You could measure the time taken by the salt to dissolve in the solution at various temperatures. Thus, the time taken by the salt to dissolve is the operational definition of the rate of solubility. Why is it important to define the variable operationally before doing an experiment? It is important because then you will know exactly what and how to observe and measure the variable. And in doing so, you will be collecting the relevant data needed to answer your questions. Do you only make an operational definition when you want to experiment? Let us say we are talking about an acid. If you look up for the definition of acid in your science book, it says, It is a chemical that can produce hydrogen ions when dissolved in water. Can you see this process with your own eyes? No. However, if you define acid as a chemical that turns blue litmus paper to red, you can see this happening! So when you define acid as the chemical that turns blue litmus paper to red, you are making an operational definition of the acid. In conclusion we define operationally a variable if you want to clearly specify how to observe or measure it. But in the context of an experiment, you define the variable before starting to collect the data. You could also define a concept operationally when you want to communicate to others, so that they can visualise the concept correctly by describing the physical characteristics.

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SELF-CHECK 4.4 Can the following statements be the operational definition for the growth of a plant ? (a) (b) (c) (d) ACTIVITY 4.5 You are to determine how each of the variables was operationally defined in each of the investigations below. That is, you are to say how the manipulated and responding variables in the investigations were measured. Investigation 1 A study was conducted to determine the effect that exercise has on ones pulse rate. Some students took part in a Jogathon and ran for different numbers of kilometres and then their pulse rates were measured. One group ran 10km, a second group ran 20km, a third group ran 30km and a fourth group ran 40km. Following the exercise, the pulse rate was immediately measured. How was each variable operationally defined in Investigation 1? Manipulated Variable: _______________________________________________________ Responding Variable: _______________________________________________________ Investigation 2 Suppose an elementary school has a programme for increasing students enjoyment of reading. What are some of the different ways that enjoyment of reading could be operationally defined? Height of plant from the ground to the top of the highest shoot Number of leaves produced Diameter of plant stem Mass of plant

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HandsonActivity (a) Studythefollowingquestions. x Which bottle design is the most childproof or tamperproof?

Do bigger parachutes work better than smaller parachutes?

Does changing temperature affect the rate of chemical reaction when AlkaSeltzer tablets are put into water?

(a) Plan how to carry out a test to find the answer to each of the questions. (b) Carry out the plan and record the results. (c) Share the results with your friends.

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SELF-CHECK 4.5 1. Identify and state the operational definitions of the variables used in each of the experiments. At what stage of the experiments are the following skills involved? (a) (b) (c) Defining Operationally Intepreting data Space-time relationship

2.

x x x

Integrated science process skills are the skills that will lead you to experimenting. Learning these skills empowers you to answer many of your own questions. The integrated science process skills are using space-time relationship, interpreting data, defining operationally, identifying and controlling variables, formulating hypotheses, and experimenting. Space-time relationship involves the ability to discern and describe directions, spatial arrangements, motion and speed, symmetry, and rate of change. It is a process to describe changes in parameter with time. Interpreting data is a skill whereby you make sense of the information, look for patterns or trends in the data and try to find the relationship between the variables. Data tables, bar charts, histograms, graphs and pie charts are tools that you use to present and interpret your data. A data table is a graphic organiser where you record and organise your data. Pictures can be a way to record your data. An operational definition tells you what is observed and how it is measured. Different investigators may use different operational definitions for the same variable.

x x x x x

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Operational definitions are important because you will know exactly what and how to observe and measure the variable. You will then be able to collect the relevant data needed to answer your questions.

Bar chart Data table Graph Histogram Integrated Science process skills

Interpreting data Operational definition Pie chart Space- time relationship

Bailer, J., Ramig, J.E, Ramsey, J.M (1995). Teaching process skills. USA: Good Apple. Fiel, R.L, Funk, H.J, Rezba, R.L, Sparague, C. (1995). Learning and assessing science process skills. Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company. Skamp, K. (ed) (2004). Teaching primary science constructively. Melbourne: Thomson Learning. Analysing and interpreting data. Retrieved Jun 6, https://oira.syr.edu/Assessment/AssessPP/Analyze.htm 2012, from

Making Science Graphs and Interpreting Data. Retrieved Jun 6, 2012, from http://staff.tuhsd.k12.az.us/gfoster/standard/bgraph2.htm Describing and interpreting data. www.uh.edu/~tech132/sln12.doc Retrieved Jun 6, 2012, from