Forums

What was a great inquiry based project you applied in your classroom?

One of the most fun and educational inquiry activities that I have done is designing and building roller coasters. Here is a link to an article entitled "Roller Coasters" that describes how to do this lesson. http://learningcenter.nsta.org/product_detail.aspx?id=10.2505/4/sc08_045_07_18 This is a great article about two roller coaster books - one for primary grades and one for upper elementary grades. There is a lesson plan to go with each of the books. The lessons, which have the students design and test roller coasters, use very simple inexpensive materials. I realize this is not life science but I could not resist posting it because it is one of my favorite lessons.

Sometimes I feel it is very difficult to choose inquiry topics because if topic too small, it is very difficult to extend the content. If the topic too big, it is also difficult for students to get the point of the program.

I love using POGIL! Check out www.pogil.org, they have books to order that your curriculum supervisor can look at and order for your classroom! Very self-guided and student-centered.

@Dennis I got the POGIL AP Biology book as recommend by another teacher. How do you use it class? It seems like a series of worksheets. How is this method inquiry based? I used it once in an Integrated Physics and Chemistry but never in Biology. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

The website that I have attached is an amazing website for inquiry based lessons. My professor showed me this website and it truly helped me when writing inquiry based lesson plans. You can find inquiry based K-5 lessons and find lessons under the categories of physical science, life science, and earth and space. I really recommend this website! http://www.oercommons.org/courses/elementary-science-inquiry-lesson-plans/view

This is an excellent website, and should prove useful for others as an example of how to transition existing lessons to a NGSS format. Thanks for sharing!

What I love to do is building concepts with my students. This was an experience regarding Thermal Energy. After exploring previous concepts, I shared with my fourth graders different hands on experiences regarding thermal energy, heat and heat transfer. We also saw and play with Phet Colorado University (http://phet.colorado.edu) simulations about heat transfer and states of matter. The only frame of reference before starting the activity that I stressed was the first law of thermodynamics that states that "Energy is not created, nor destroyed, it is transformed" just to be aware of not using verbs such as create or make; after the experience ans the sims, students were perfectly able to contribute to build a group sound definition of the words: heat, temperature, and to describe different ways of heat transfer. My role all the time was facilitating the active listening and keeping the notes on the whiteboard so they were able to go back to the different students entries. My group is a 25 student group so I was careful that everyone had the opportunity to participate. When the definitions were built, everyone copied them on their logbooks.

A great inquiry based lab I did with my students was dry ice. Students go to use different materials (hot plate, water at different temps, various metals, vinegar, soap, etc) to see how it would react with dry ice and draw conclusions on why. It was a lot of fun and dry ice isn't something students see every day!

I just completed an inquiry based project while I was teaching a science unit on energy as a clinical student with 8th graders. I found the idea in the Learning Center. The students built their own roller coasters with pipe tubing. They focused on observing and discussing energy as the marble travels down the roller coaster such as potential, mechanical, kinetic, thermal, etc.

One of the best inquiry projects I did last year was introducing students to the enzyme cellulase which works to produce glucose. The enzyme comes in a Biofuels Kit by Biorad, and is easy for the teacher to set up for 5 classes of 20 students. Once the students finished the "canned" project, they did the inquiry with enzymes extracted from different types of mushrooms.

I read in an article that you can do an oil spill clean up. It will show the side effects for an oil spill and gets the kids up and moving. The kids and investigate different methods of removing oil.

One inquiry based lesson I think would be beneficial for all levels of students is an inquiry lesson plan on something called "Outrageous Ooze". It was so interesting to see the students play with the ooze and question what it actually is. It is also a great activity to introduce states of matter to younger students and reinforce concepts of matter to upper level students. https://www.exploratorium.edu/science_explorer/ooze.html

I did not make a coaster from scratch but bought three (3) from Lakeshore and my students love this. My students truly love STEM activities and any hands-on activities.

Elizabeth: Thanks for the link it is great!

Thanks for the link! Great resource for inquiry based projects!

A great resource for including both flora and fauna concepts is the Bottle Biology resource....it's been around for awhile, but it is a good one! Here is the link to the website: www.bottlebiology.org

We did an inquiry project of building a roller coaster in our teaching science with inquiry class. it was a great success we learned a lot. As for my own 3rd grade classroom I take lot of ideas from www.teachingchannel.org It is a great website for learning and planning inquiry based activities in classroom.

Any examples of LIFE SCIENCE based inquiry projects?

Any examples of LIFE SCIENCE based inquiry projects?