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NOVA Quiz, The

Viewing Ideas

Before Watching

1. Divide the class into several teams and tell the students that they will be designing their own quiz show. As they watch "The NOVA Quiz," ask each group to concentrate on a specific feature of the program, such as the types of questions asked, the time restrictions placed on contestants, how and when contestants are eliminated, specific rules of play, or the methods used to keep score.

After Watching

Each round of "The NOVA Quiz" is organized in a different manner. The following activities, based on quiz show questioning strategies, can help your students to develop important critical thinking skills and to generate questions for their own quiz show. Conducting a Quiz Show in Your Classroom provides some ideas for organizing and running your in-class quiz.

1. Classification
   The concept of organizing information is central to many disciplines. The following activities suggest some interesting methods for teaching students the importance of categorizing objects and ideas.

   1. Collect one shoe from each student. Put all the shoes in a pile in the middle of the room. Select a student to divide the pile into three categories. When she is finished, ask the other students to guess what criteria she used to divide the shoes. Students can take turns classifying the shoes and discussing all the possible ways of dividing the set. (Hint: Some possible criteria for classifying shoes include color, brand name, types of tread, whether or not a shoe is gender-specific, whether or not a shoe has laces, whether it's a left shoe or a right shoe, and whether it's shoes made from leather or from other materials, or distinctions among shoes with special markings for popular brands.)

   2. Ask students to answer the following questions about themselves on a piece of paper. On the board, record the number of students who fit each category.

      • Are you a boy or a girl?

      • Do you wear glasses?

      • Do you prefer chocolate or vanilla ice cream?

      • Do you play on a school sports team?

      • Is your birthday between January and June or between July and December?

      How many of these questions do students think would need to be answered in order to identify one person in the class? Challenge them to test their predictions. Choose one student to be the questioner, and have her close her eyes. Then silently select another student to be the subject. Once the subject has been selected, the questioner can open her eyes and begin asking her classmates the questions on the list, i.e., "Is the subject a boy or a girl?" Is the questioner able to identify the subject? How many answers does she need? What other questions could she ask that might make it easier for her to figure out who the subject is? What might make it more difficult? (Hint: To figure out who is being described, the questioner will need to engage in a process of elimination. Specific physical details that are unique to only a few individuals are the most direct route.)

   3. Classification is used to organize many types of items or ideas. In science, classification is used to identify minerals according to specific properties, group animals into families or genera, and to organize chemical elements according to their atomic numbers. Ask students to invent a new rock, mineral, plant, or animal. Have them explain how their new creation or discovery should be categorized according to existing classifications.

2. Predicting Outcomes
   The following activities suggest some ways for teaching about predicting outcomes.

   1. Discuss what a prediction is and what determines its accuracy. Ask students to predict their parents' response to a question such as "May I go to the rock concert?" What is the basis for their predictions? (Hint: Some possible factors that could determine parents' responses include whether the concert is on a school night, how far away it is, the cost of the show, who will be chaperoning the outing, what happened the last time they were asked, or even whether the parents are in a good mood.)

   2. For each of the following experiments, describe to students what you are about to do. Ask them to predict the outcome and to explain their predictions before each procedure is performed. After you finish each experiment, discuss students' predictions, the actual results, and the scientific principles involved in the demonstration. (Hint: Experiment A: The water remains in the cup because the force of air pressure pushing up on the cardboard is greater than the weight of the water pushing down. Experiment B: The Ping Pong balls will move toward each other, not apart, because of the Bernoulli Effect. he stream of moving air lowers the pressure between the balls and they are pushed together.)

      1. Experiment A: Fill an ordinary plastic cup with water to the very top and cover it with a piece of thin cardboard measuring approximately six inches square (the thickness of a cereal box is fine). Ask your students to predict what will happen when the cup is inverted and you let go of the cardboard.

      2. Experiment B: Cut two pieces of thread approximately 1 meter long. Tape one thread onto each of two Ping Pong balls. Holding the free ends of the threads, suspend the balls six centimeters apart. Ask your students to predict what will happen when you blow between the Ping Pong balls. (You must do this without laughing!)