Unit 4 - Lesson 1: Communicating Research and Arguments

Do-Now Question

Do you ever find that you talk to different people in a different way? Describe how you talk to different people differently, and explain why you talk to them in a different way. (2-3 sentences)

Lesson Objectives

Students will be able to communicate scientiﬁc information to different audiences.
Students will be able to use AI tools to support research presentation and communication.

Communicating to Different Audiences

In order to make your research findings useful, you need to be able to effectively communicate your argument and findings. And just like how popular science and original research articles are written differently, you also have to be able to write to engage different types of audiences with your work. You may be writing for your classmates to read your work, but you might also be writing to a younger population to teach them more about your topic, or to an older population to promote change in your local government, for example. Watch this video (http s://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyH79KQET5E), and while you watch it, think about how communicating with different audiences will affect how you write your research paper.

Different Audiences Activity

Instructions: Read the excerpt below, and then complete this worksheet (https://docs.google. com/document/d/1l4-iefXFqN3nddbgNCtJrjtqxsUyT63SvgUPnxgw2tU/copy) by rewriting the excerpt first for elementary school children to read, and then for the general public to read.

Excerpt from How much do viruses change over time? (https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/paleofeces_article. pdf):

"Bacteriophages, or just phages, are tiny viruses that infect bacteria. Some phages help us by killing harmful bacteria and keeping our gut healthy. Although phages have existed for millions of years, we don’t know much about the ones from ancient times. To find out, we analyzed super old human poop samples. Using a new technique called de novo assembly, we pieced together the DNA of ancient viruses from these samples. We discovered nearly 300 types of bacteriophages that we had never seen before. But there was also one 1,300-year old phage that was almost exactly the same as a modern day species. This was extremely surprising! Our research provides a useful method to rebuild ancient phage DNA sequences and learn more about the history of viruses."

Be sure to submit your copy of the worksheet on Google Classroom!