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Title- Teaching Science Through Inquiry-based and Hands-on Practices
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Problem: Teacher wants her students to have more active experiences. She feels that there are too many tasks consisting of paper and pencil only as well as the teaching methods lecturing and recitation. With the pressure increasing to achieve state standards and raise a school's API, she decided on a goal that was to complete the CA Science Standards in the 4 domains of physical sciences, life sciences, earth sciences, and investigation and experimentation through inquiry-based learning.
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Instructional Intervention- Student-generated discussions and inquiry-based learning is where students construct knowledge with one another by asking questions and explaining their understandings. During student-generated inquiry discussion, students formulate key issues for consideration, asking questions frequently and spontaneously together and teacher questioning is rare. and teacher questions are rare with student questioning frequently and spontaneously. This environment, leads to students having a more active role in the learning occurring.
Research suggests, best practices for this instruction are as follows:
1. Good questions make better hypotheses.Teach students how to frame a good question. Help them narrow their inquiry to a topic they can reasonably explore.
2. Ask for explanations. Encourage students to explain their hypotheses or predictions aloud. This will prompt them to explain their understanding of underlying concepts, giving you a window into their understanding.
3.Watch for (and mediate) misconceptions. If students are basing a prediction on a false premise or conceptual misunderstanding, set up activities to challenge their thinking.
4.Scaffold investigations. Structure their learning experience to maximize results. Provide them with a framework for investigating.
5.Use role play. Acting out characters (Hamlet) or agents (red blood cell) prompts students to make predictions. Based on what they know about their role, how will their character react? How will the agent interact with other agents?
6.Highlight patterns and connections. Help students recognize patterns in their findings. Show them how to transform raw data into graphs or other visual representations that will help them see patterns and make connections.
7.Use questioning strategies. Ask questions throughout the inquiry cycle—when students are posing questions, while they are investigating, when they analyzing results or presenting conclusions. At each stage, challenge them to explain their reasoning and defend results.
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Strategy- Generating and Testing Hypotheses: “Across content areas and grade levels, inquiry in the classroom turns native curiosity to the learner's advantage. Effective teachers create these opportunities to guide students through the process of asking good questions, generating hypotheses and predictions, investigating through testing or research, making observations, and finally analyzing and communicating results. Through active learning experiences, students deepen their understanding of key concepts.”
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Strategy Evidence- (1)Understanding increases when students are asked to explain the scientific principles they are working from and the hypotheses they generate from these principles (Lavoie, 1999; Lavoie & Good, 1988; Lawson, 1988). (2)By generating and testing a hypothesis, students are applying their conceptual understanding (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001). (3)In comparisons of inquiry-based instruction and more traditional teaching methods (such as lectures and textbook-based instruction), researchers have found that inquiry methods help students gain a better understanding of fundamental concepts in science (White & Frederickson, 1997, 1998). (4)An interactive approach to teaching physics concepts provides a better environment for student learning than traditional textbook-based instruction (Hake, 1998).
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Collection of Data- Inquiry-based learning guides the student to actively seek out information and take responsibility for his or her own learning. Questioning is a strong indication that children are “thinking outside of the box” and developing science literacy. This was one means of the data being collected in this classroom. The teacher stated, “It was very interesting to me that children were asking both factual and evidential questions. I used their questioning as an indicator that they were becoming active learners and not passive receivers of information.” The projects she implemented in her classroom gave her an opportunity for extensive observation. She recorded five student case studies of questioning in this type of science instruction. Parent surveys, student’s work, and videos of the small group work allowed for further data collections.
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Analyzing Data- By observing the students, the teacher was able to see how all students took on different leadership qualities and felt more comfortable taking on these leadership roles during different hands-on activities. Students even volunteered to go into other classrooms to help with science and share their learning.
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RESULTS- In the conclusion, this teacher stated that teaching science through inquiry-based methods proved to be a wonderful, rewarding experience for her and her students. Students extended their ability to formulate both factual and evidential questions, communicated more with their parents about their learning, and were able to succeed with the science curriculum no matter what their specific learning needs were at the start of the school year. There were extraordinary implications for learning not only science but for students achieving in school by being more involved in inquiry-based, hands-on learning. The academic achievement of students is only one indication of what other students can achieve across America throughout our curriculum if we involve students in more hands-on, inquiry-based learning, give teachers a voice in the curriculum, use funds to promote and build these programs, and establish partnerships to enhance education. Every single student participated in the school science fair, and this was the true indication of how this type of inquiry-based science really made an impact on the students. The teacher stated that based on the success, she plans to continue to use this type of teaching in not only science, but other content areas as well.
