A Student-generate inquiry activity

The author describes a student generated inquiry activity where the teacher provides the question and sample materials and the students then design an investigation to answer their own varia... See More

The author describes a student generated inquiry activity where the teacher provides the question and sample materials and the students then design an investigation to answer their own variables about the topic. My students love setting up and doing these types of inquiry - short activities where we could share data as a class and compare answers to build understanding of a theory. It does require teaching students how to do this, but that is what the author is doing in the earlier activities described. And teaching this way provides students an opportunity to have experiences to build mental models and concepts on.

Demonstrating Knowledge through Labs

After learning about heat transfer students are asked to design a series of activities that will demonstrate not only their understanding of the concepts of conduction, convection and radiat... See More

After learning about heat transfer students are asked to design a series of activities that will demonstrate not only their understanding of the concepts of conduction, convection and radiation but also their ability to apply this knowledge to experimental design. The activity is provided in this article along with a scoring guide. The authors describe how the students came to their understandings of heat transfer before this activity. The scoring guide has possible answers. While this type of activity would be a great way to assess what students and a good inquiry activity for students, I wonder how well students are able to do this without prior experience in creating their own lab procedures to illustrate concepts.