Attended workshop on

“Doing What Scientists Do”

An Inquiry-Based Science Approach

We need to teach children how to use their senses to gather information and make detailed observations.

Scientists Observe Everything

Children need to be actively engaged. Learning activities need to be hands on as well as minds on!

Scientists Measure and Record… They use tools to find out even more.

“One must know what to measure and how to measure before measurement can mean anything at all,” stated by Thomas Kuhn

Measurements help us compare, but also predict many events.

Measurement can tell a story.

Science is all about observing and experimenting.....we need a way to add relevance to those observations and experiments so we use measurements to collect and express our results....without them we would not be able to make and conclusions about anything!

The Hong Kong standards for grades 1–3 devote approximately half the targeted time to numbers and almost all the time remaining to geometry and measurement.— Ginsburg, Leinwand and Decker, 2009

 

Scientists Ask Many Questions 

Students often ask “expert questions”- where they look to the teacher or a text to provide them with an answer. When they do this we want to return them to the experiment or observation to search for the answer whenever possible.

We need to get students to start creating their own questions for investigation instead of only answering prescribed lab questions.

Once we move students into asking questions that can be investigated, we then provide them with the tools to do just that!“What happens if….”To facilitate this type of question making your students can use a chart like this for brainstorming in small groups or partners. 

We Notice….We Wonder….