Linking Explaining With Thinking About Gas Laws

This article describes how Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) can be incorporated into an inquiry lesson on the gas laws. A peer leader is solicited to cooperatively lead a group of four to six ... See More

This article describes how Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) can be incorporated into an inquiry lesson on the gas laws. A peer leader is solicited to cooperatively lead a group of four to six students. During the engage and explore stages of the 5 E inquiry model, students gathered data in order to hypothesize and look for patterns that could help them construct an understanding of absolute temperature, Charles’s law, and Boyle's law. A sample Data Table was included. When patterns emerged, students continued on to the explain phase. The article included a set of questions to use during the explain phase that helped students construct a plot of volume-temperature data. Then students went on to Boyle’s law in the elaboration phase. By the evaluation phase, students invented concepts for themselves and had opportunities to form and test hypotheses from available evidence. As they defended their claims, they learned HOW to think and not WHAT to think. This is an exercise in higher level thinking skills and this reviewer would recommend only experienced teachers tackle this particular activity.