II.C.1 Ants: Strength in Teamwork and Safety in Numbers

1. Have a brief ant discussion with your class.
   
   
2. Summon ant stories from your students. This should be relatively easy since most children in Florida have probably inspected ants. On the chalkboard or overhead projector write the following headings:
• Ant attacks
• Smart ants
• Amazing ants
• Strange ants
• Hardworking ants

Have students use the categories to trigger memories and focus on specific ant behaviors. For each observation, have a class discussion about the "how and why." How did the ant do that? Why did the ant do that?

Another way to get students to share and discuss ant observations is to divide the class into teams of three and give each student a task. Using the same headings, have members of each group select an experience one of them has had that would fit into one of the categories. The student who had the experience is the "hero." Of the remaining two, one is designated as the "narrator," the other the interpreter. The narrator tells the class the little story (no more than a minute or two). The interpreter tries to answer questions, beginning "why" or "how" posed by the instructor.

Example:
Narrator: "One day Jill's mother plugged in her electric tea kettle, and hundreds of little ants came running out the spout."
Teacher: (one possible "why" question): "Why do you think the ants went in the tea kettle?"
Interpreter (possible answer): "Because they were thirsty?"
Teacher (possible "how" question to class): "Has anyone here seen ants drinking water? How do they drink? Do they have tongues?"

With a class of 25 or more, this activity could take at least a half-hour. It is a good way, however, to help students realize that someone else will most likely be fascinated with interesting natural history objects and events they notice. After making a discovery, many scientists immediately begin to imagine telling someone else about it or they start writing about it. Similar to the way testimonies in court help a jury, retelling the natural history story helps a scientist observe the important details that will make the story complete and compelling. When you encourage your students to wonder about the missing details of a story out loud, you are promoting a helpful trick of scientific narrative. "I wonder how long Jill's mother's tea kettle was left unplugged?" "I wonder what kind of ants they were?" "I wonder how much water an ant needs?"

At certain points, you can probably insert scientific information. Only a small number of stories may give you this opportunity. Although this may seem to be an inefficient way to convey scientific information, students seem to retain more when the information is in some way relevant to their personal life.