Discrepant Event
Inquiry
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A philanthropist
Medical doctor
Husband of Julia Ward
An educator of the handicapped
A social reformer and an abolitionist
First to advocate the inclusion of
handicapped children in public schools.
Samuel Gridley Howe 1801-1876
Present students with a puzzling,
paradoxical, or discrepant event or story.
 Beginning of a lesson.
 Students should ask questions, pose
hypotheses, analyze and synthesize
information to draw conclusions that will
help them find the answer to the puzzle.
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Description
Engage students in hypothesizing and
working together to solve a puzzle.
 Serves as a strategy for higher-order
thinking and investing students in the
content to come.

Purpose

Strategy is used to motivate students to
begin thinking about a new theme, idea,
or concept that you will deal with in the
new lesson.
Application
Teaching strategy built around intellectual
confrontation.
 Students form, test, and evaluate
hypotheses by asking the teacher
questions that must be answerable with
either a “yes” or a “no.”
 Students make predictions.
 Students practice critical thinking as they
generate and evaluate questions and
answers.
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Overview of Discrepant Event
Inquiry
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Students search own knowledge, recalling
whatever they might already know about
the subject, in hopes of finding clues.
Overview continued
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1) Develop and Present the Inquiry
 Teacher generates story or puzzle.
 The teacher identifies what component is to be
omitted for students to discover.
 Omitted component creates the story’s mystery.
 Present the story or puzzle.
 Following the story or puzzle statement, a guiding
question is given in order to guide the students in
their questioning.
Procedures
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2) Students Question the Teacher
 To solve the puzzle the students must gain
additional information. They collect this data by
asking the teacher questions that can only be
answered by a “yes” or a “no.”
 Appropriate questions are those that help one to
“infer” an answer. Was this person male?
Acceptable versus throwing out names randomly.
Procedures
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3) Organize and Review Information
 Periodically pause and review key information
already discovered with the students.
 Have students process their ideas in small groups,
they need to talk it out.
Procedures
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4) Formulate and Present an Answer
 At some point students will arrive at what they
believe is the correct answer and will want to offer
it to the class.
 Pause the class and have the students state their
answer and then, before indicating the
correctness of the answer, require the students to
present the train of thought that produced the
answer.
Procedures
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In 1837, a young boy named John lived
on a farm in a beautiful, mountainous,
wooded area in eastern Tennessee. His
family planted corn and raised animals for
meat, milk and eggs. His father
participated in the legislative branch of
the government. His mother taught
English in a local school. He had four
brothers and three sisters. The family
appeared happy and prosperous.
The Discrepant Event
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In 1839, the family moved to a treeless,
dry, flat prairie, where it was barely able
to raise enough food to survive. Two of
John’s brothers died and one of his sisters
died. Unable to make a living farming, his
father became a member of the
legislature. His mother helped publish the
local newspaper. John and his family
missed their beautiful home in the
mountains.
The Discrepant Event
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Why did John and his family leave their
beautiful home in Tennessee and take
such a hard journey only to settle in a hot
and barren land?
The Guiding Question
1) Did John’s dad move to get a better
job?
 2) Did they move because of a natural
disaster?
 3)Did they have to move?
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Possible Questions
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John and his family were Cherokees
relocated during the “Trail of Tears.”
Answer
A Whale of A Cow Tale
Slaughterhouse personnel estimated, in the U.S., that 30,860,000 cattle
and 1,353,000 calves
 entered their doors during 1992. About 60-percent of the total weight of
cattle and calves provided meat for people in the U.S. and for export,
according to the animal rendering industry. However, the equivalent of
about 11 billion pounds of cow parts or 12,885,200 cows disappeared.
Ishmael H. Melville, an ex-meat packer, now a butchery specialist at Moby
Slaughterhouse Number 5,
 said. Cows give us something to think about. Are they just hamburger?
Cows don’t just surrender, you know. They’re fighters, right to the end.
Cows are noble creatures. But, I sure love a good steak.
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Eventually, if mad cow disease reaches the U.S. and it has in other
countries, the missing 11 billion pounds of beef would pose a threat to
our health. All beef products would pose a threat to the health of U.S.
consumers.
 The beef products would also pose a threat to the consumers in countries
receiving exported beef.

A Whale of A Cow Tale
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Animal renderers in the U.S. are doing
something with almost 13 billion pounds
of missing cow parts, what?
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Every inedible part of a cow or calf is processed and sold for
manufacture--items such as the following: plywood adhesives,
synthetic motor oil, cosmetics, detergents, arthritis treatments,
gel capsules for medicines, charcoal ash for sugar refining, bank
notes, and asphalt paving.
 The enormous growth in consumption of edible beef in the U.S.
led to the formation of processes using previously unused waste
for nonfood manufacturing.
 Money is made on the animals heels, feet, bones, horns, and
lungs. The missing cow parts (11 billion pounds) leave the
renderers for shipment to industrial and pharmaceutical plants
across the country.
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PROBABLE SOLUTION
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1. Cow parts wind up dumped into landfills, after preparation of
beef for human consumption. The remaining cow parts are ignited
to heat huge boilers that produce power for the rendering plant.
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2. Inedible cow parts are shipped back to the cattle ranchers.
Cattle ranchers sell the cattle to foreign renderers. The cattle
ranchers must repay the American renderers for all the unused
and wasted parts.
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3. Renderers under report edible beef from rendered cattle to
drive the wholesale beef prices higher.
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4. The statistical reports issued by the renderers prove inaccurate
because of disparate reporting systems in the various states.
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5. Ishmael H. Melville was really an operative for radical
vegetarian groups.
POSSIBLE STUDENT HYPOTHESES
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1. Little waste, from cattle rendering, finds its way to landfills.
Less than two-percent of the inedible cow parts reach landfills.
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2. Some inedible cow parts fuel heating systems in rendering
plants. Cow parts, as fuel, constitute less than one-percentage of
the waste resulting from rendering.
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3. Zero waste products return to ranchers for rebates. Some
waste products return from rendering, for a price, to ranchers as
feed for cattle and chickens.
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4. Waste products for feed, in the U.S., remain illegal.
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5. Renderers report statistics derived from rendered cattle of both
edible and inedible products.
A Whale of a Cow Tale, FACT
SHEET

Banner, M., 1995, Report of the Committee to
Consider the Ethical Implications of Emerging
Technologies in the Breeding of Farm Animals,
HMSO.

Chase, S., March 22, 2001, Federal Agents Seize
Vermont Flock, The Boston Globe.

Coe, Sue and Alexander Cockburn, illustrator,
1996, Dead Meat.

Cook, Robin, 1997, Toxin, Penguin Putnam Inc.,
NY.
A Whale of a Cow Tale,
REFERENCES and RESOURCES
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http://www.defra.gov.uk/
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http://www.telusplanet.net/public/jross/beefprod.htm
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http://www.ca.uky.edu/agc/pubs/asc/asc136/asc136.htm
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http://www.mad-cow.org/00/jan01_late.html
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http://www.agclassroom.org/teacher/pdf/prairie/6_8/5_beyondBeef.pdf
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http://www.defra.gov.uk/footandmouth/
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http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/2001/010828b.htm
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http://www.bseinquiry.gov.uk/
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http://www.aphis.usda.gov/oa/bse/
A Whale of a Cow Tale, LINKS