Caesar's Last Breath Presentation
Introduction
Now that you have read Caesar's Last Breath, take some time to think about what you read and the key scientific discoveries, concepts, or technology advancements that were discussed. Use this sheet to help you and the students in your group organize your ideas and develop a presentation about the section you read to demonstrate your understanding of the section and the concept strands and to share what you learned with your fellow classmates.
Group Discussion
Start by meeting as a group and discussing what you learned from the chapter and interlude. See below for the main points as a starting point. Your reading log notes should be a good starting point for this.
Main Points from Section
What are the main storylines of the chapter and interlude?
What were the important scientific discoveries or technology advancements?
How did the stories illustrate the concept strands?
Did the chapter or interlude bring up any misconceptions that our classmates might have? How can we clearly explain the correct information?
Were there any particularly surprising and memorable facts or anecdotes?
What are the most important stories, facts, discoveries, or advances that the rest of the class should know about?
Presentation
Next, your group will prepare a presentation to the rest of your class about you assigned chapter and interlude. The goal of the presentation is to communicate the key points of the chapter and interlude to you classmates who read other parts of the book, and to demonstrate what you learned about the practice of science and the connections between science and society. Use the information you've gathered to create a poster, a PowerPoint, a video, or an audio presentation. Your teacher will provide you with specific information about the format and organization. Main sections will likely include:
- Storyline summary
- What happened?
- Who was involved?
- What was the relevant background or context that lead up to the story?
- If there are multiple storylines in the chapter, how do they connect?
- How are the chapter and interlude connected?
- Were there any particularly surprising or memorable facts or anecdotes?
- Important scientific discoveries and technology advancements
- What were the key discoveries and advancements?
- How were those discoveries or advancements made?
- What were the long-term impacts of those discoveries advancements?
- Concept strands (go thorough all strands)
- How do parts of the chapter and interlude illustrate or provide insight about the strand?
- If the chapter or interval text doesn’t address the strands, can you think of ways that expanding the story out might? For example, if the chapter doesn’t talk about how science impacts society, can you think about ways that we use the advances or discoveries today, even though the author didn’t mention them?
For the concept strands, you want to make sure to explain how the stories and examples illustrate the concepts rather than just making a list of examples. Remember that some chapters do not have examples of all six strands.
If you do a visual presentation (poster, PowerPoint, video), it should include images that help communicate parts of the storyline or key discoveries and advancements (and concept strands, if appropriate). You may use the illustrations from the book, but you should include at least five other images.
Essay
Your teacher may also assign an essay about the history of a scientific or technological advance described in the book. You should summarize the advance and discuss the conditions of the discovery. Think about questions like: Why was the advancement made in that time and place? Were there social, economic, or political conditions that drove the discovery? Were there technological advancements that were required to make the discovery possible? What were the short-term impacts of the discovery? What were the long-term impacts?
