Leah
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I have worked with the Billion Oyster Project in Brooklyn, NY with my 8th graders. We monitored an oyster cage by counting living oysters as well as other found organisms. Students also recorded environmental conditions. This is part of an effort to reintroduce one billion oysters back into the NYC waterways in order to make this estuary ecosystem healthy again! It's really awesome for the students to get hands-on field experience and get a sense of what it's like to participate in such a huge and tangible effort to improve our environment. There is huge value in doing a project like this. Students gain understanding of what it's like to do science in the world, they feel empowered and hopeful that they can make a real contribution, and they're able to make connections with other areas of learning -- from studying population change in 6th grade to understanding how healthy shorelines help mitigate damage from (increasingly strong) storms. My main advice is to research projects in your local area and do an in-person training with the people running the program. You'll feel much more confident leading your students after having the hands-on experience yourself! Also know that field science is often messy -- it's good to prepare your students for that!
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I love this discussion prompt as it has gotten me thinking about many of the lessons and overall units I teach to my students. I mostly use the curriculum from Activate Learning called IQWST for the middle schoolers. This curriculum does a good job of setting up many confirmation and structured inquiry activities. I'm interested in looking more deeply at my lessons to see where I can work in more guided and open activities, particularly for the 6th grade. At the beginning of the year the 6th grade unit is about light and sight. Some of the activities can become a bit redundant, so I'm thinking this would be a good place to add a guided inquiry activity. One place in particular is the exploration of the light box. The curriculum procedure is to have an object in a box that has one hole for an eye to look through and a "door" next to where the object is placed. The idea is to reinforce the scientific principle that in order to see an object we must have 1. an object 2. line of sight 3. light -- fairly obvious. In order to open up the activity I'd like to pose a question like -- "How can you make alterations that affect how you do or do not see the object?" -- I would then provide them with different materials such as tissue paper, clear plastic, etc. that they could experiment with and then make drawings/notes about their observations. Students practice: asking questions, making models, collecting/analyzing data data, constructing explanations
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I define inquiry as -- the process of building understanding through observations, posing questions, testing hypotheses, analyzing data, and presenting findings. It is built on imagination and curiosity and leaves room for many different approaches and conclusions. The image is my map and accompanying notes/thoughts.
Viewing 3 posts - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)