Excellent Resource

This has been a fantastic resource to explain to teachers how they can raise the cognitive demand of their laboratory experiences and encourage greater student involvement.

The Fastest way to get from Cookbook to Inquiry

I refer back to this article over and again, both when I'm modifying a lesson and when I'm trying to help other teachers better understand how to bring inquiry based learning into their clas... See More

I refer back to this article over and again, both when I'm modifying a lesson and when I'm trying to help other teachers better understand how to bring inquiry based learning into their classrooms. This is the most efficient method for taking the average ‘set-procedure, set-result’ lab and transforming it into something that allows students to make their own discovery and truly benefit from a scientific process. The point is well made that too often, we give students a concept, fully explained, and then ask them to follow a set of steps that will prove the concept we’ve already stated to be true. By removing the standard process, students have the opportunity to become active users of science rather than passive observers. The examples in this article clarify what a quick easy and efficient process this is for adapting lessons. (The unspoken shame is that more of our curriculum isn’t written with inquiry in mind to begin with, but this is a great recipe for fixing it.) I recommend this article to all of my colleagues as they search for a method of making the science curriculum more meaningful and less based on rote knowledge aimed at a standards based test. And the best part is that this student centered lesson is just as assessable and still yields great results on standardized tests.