How do scientists use science practices, scientific tools and measurements to form hypotheses and draw conclusions? This unit emphasizes the Crosscutting Concepts of Structure and Function and Cause and Effect, and highlights the influence of science, engineering, and technology on society and the natural world. Using Waterhouse Hawkins and his dinosaurs as an example, students explore how tools help scientists learn more, how tools and technologies have changed over the years and how students can use engineering to design a tool themselves.

This unit begins with students observing and recording properties of various items using their senses and basic scientific tools. Next, students learn how paleontologists and other scientists hypothesized how bones of prehistoric creatures fit together. Students then dig up “bones” from prehistoric animals and make hypotheses of their own about what prehistoric animal their bone belonged to and how their one bone fits into the whole model to help the animal function.  Students use more scientific tools to measure and record data about the bones before creating small 3D models of the creatures.

In the final sections of the unit, students discuss and conclude how improvements in technology and scientific tools have enhanced model creation and enabled future discoveries over time. The unit concludes with an engineering challenge using everyday items to design, test and improve a tool for digging up bones.