Students Can Discover Their Own Fingerprint Pattern

I have often tried to develop lessons where students can discover more about themselves. For example in any group of 10 or more people you are likely to find at least a few different fingerprint types. In a classroom of 20 to 30 students you could find an example of each of the patterns shown in the graphic. All you need is some typical fingerprint ink pads and some blank sheets of paper. Because we are in a new age of problems related to student confidentiality students should not put their names on the blank sheets of paper and at the end of the lesson they can either tear up the sheets or shred them. They could take them home, but again should not have any identification on the paper itself. The teacher may want to have some magnifying glasses to assist in the identification of pattern types.

This lesson gives the teacher a chance to discuss how we are all "different" and yet how we are all "the same", how such patterns can be important in identification of people in accidents or to find criminals. It can help teachers talk about how fingerprints are left on surfaces and how powders can stick to the oily materials left as the finger touches a surface. The teacher can expand or narrow this lesson in many ways, but I particularly like using the fingerprints to make artistic drawings.

Students can put a print or a partial print on a piece of paper and then draw around or on the print. They can make prints into little bugs or other insects, into patterns of prints, and into other designs. They can also have a text bubble next to the print and have the insect or animal they have made say something. You might look at the newspaper on how there are many cartoons that have insects or animals say things. Fingerprint art is an interesting way to integrate the scientific investigation of fingerprints into the area of art.

The teacher might talk about how contamination by fingerprints can be a problem for very old books and manuscripts and explain that this is why special gloves are sometimes worn by researchers working with such old materials. The teacher may point out how we handle photographs to protect them from getting fingerprints on their surface.

All teachers are fingerprinted before they are allowed to teach, but in the past few years new regulations now require teachers in most districts to be fingerprinted on a regular basis. Teachers may want to check with their administrators before doing any lesson with fingerprints. If you throw away everything properly at the end of the lesson this should not be a problem. If the students produce art work with fingerprints then it is probably best if these do not have their names on them either, but initials may be allowed. If you have a school resource officer you could check with him or her and they may even want to come to your class and add to the lesson.