Inquiry in Science Teaching & Learning

Dear student-teachers,
When we teach science, try our best to make our students think about the topic we focus.Throw out questions that make them think.Use all the thinking skills - might it be Edward de Bono's theories & strategies (CoRT, 6 Thinking Caps, Lateral Thinking etc.), Tony Buzan's Mind Mapping/Use your head and others, Thinking Through Questioning (Wiley Wilen), using Graphic Organizers (GO) and other strategies- to incite & iniatite thinking. Go on and explore these sttrategies to improve our teaching. Hope these two articles will help to start.

Inquiry-based learning (Enquiry-based learning in British English) or inquiry-based science describes a range of philosophical, curricular and pedagogical approaches to teaching. Its core premises include the requirement that learning should be based around student's questions. Pedagogy and curriculum requires students to work together to solve problems rather than receiving direct instructions on what to do from the teacher. The teacher's job in an inquiry learning environment is therefore not to provide knowledge, but instead to help students along the process of discovering knowledge themselves. In this form of instruction, it is proposed that teachers should be viewed as facilitators of learning rather than vessels of knowledge. Even though this form of instruction has gained great popularity of the past decade, there is plenty of debate about the effectiveness of this form of instruction.

Inquiry-based learning is an instructional method developed during the discovery learning movement of the 1960s. It was developed in response to a perceived failure of more traditional forms of instruction, where students were required simply to memorize fact laden instructional materials (Bruner, 1961). Inquiry learning is a form of active learning, where progress is assessed by how well students develop experimental and analytical skills rather than how much knowledge they possess.

 See more :  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquiry-based_learning

How to Teach Students to Connect

Before you explore, describe:

• What the task is about
• Why it is important to do it
• How much time has been set aside
• What the final product will look like
• Who will see the final product
• Teacher prompts:
  
  1. "Would you like to know why...?"
  2. "Have you ever wondered about...?"
  3. "You will better understand..."

How to help students frame the investigation:

• Provide the background
  
  1. Define the parameters for exploration
  2. Model exploring in front of the class
  3. Allow students to explore
  4. Teacher prompts:
     
     1. "Please read these directions..."
     2. "Listen for clues while I tell you this story..."
     3. "I wonder what will happen when..."
     4. "I think that happened because..."
     5. "Have your journals open as you explore."
     6. "Write and draw observations that are interesting to you."
• Connect the background to the question
  
  1. Invite each student to share his or her story, to explain his/her science theories
  2. Ask each student to listen to others and organize his own science theories
  3. Draw out of the student the connection she sees between her story and the task-at-hand
  4. Insist on reasons, details, and explanations for his theories
  5. Teacher prompts:
     
     1. "What does this remind you of?"
     2. "How is it the same or different?"
     3. "How big? How often?"
     4. "What happened first? Can you remember more detail?"
• Make sure the question is testable
  
  1. Help the student state the question in such a way that it tells him or her what to do to answer it
  2. Verify that the question has an answer that can be observed or measured
  3. Teacher prompts:
     
     1. "How will you measure...?"
     2. "What do you think the answer will be?"

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How to Teach Students to Design

Develop a systematic plan to collect data:

• Allow students time to perform a trial run of his or her data collection
• Promote the use of detail to communicate clear directions
  
  1. Tools and "rules"
  2. Teacher Prompts:
     
     1. "What did you use to measure...?"
     2. "How will you keep from messing up your data?"
     3. "How many points should you have on your graph?"
     4. "Will you average....?"
• Model how to make statistical decisions
  
  1. Sufficient data
  2. Number of repetitions
• Create an empty data table
  
  1. Teacher Prompts:
     
     1. "Set up and label the columns..."
     2. "List the values for the manipulated variable."
     3. "Make an extra column for observations."

See this more in -
http://educationnorthwest.org/

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