|
|
How to guide inquiry and promote learning
It is often easy to forget that an inquiry lesson is only
the first step to building knowledge. The role of good science curriculum
and
teachers is to assist students in using inquiry to build scientific
understandings. The following four principles can be used to promote
student learning through inquiry.
-
Relate the science concepts to students' prior knowledge.
Plan time to draw out and build on students’ initial ideas. The
teaching suggestions section of the SEPUP modules teacher’s
guide often contains recommendations for eliciting student
ideas. Help students
confront their misconceptions with alternative ideas, and
require students to weigh the reasonableness of each idea.
-
Emphasize the science focus of the lesson.
Students can often become wrapped up in a fun hands-on investigation
and not think about the science involved. Emphasize the science
concepts and processes that underlie an inquiry-based lesson
by providing time
for discussion and elaboration of scientific ideas.
-
Reflect on new knowledge.
Make sure students have the opportunity to reflect on the
results of the inquiry: What new ideas have they learned?
How do the
new ideas fit into what they learned in previous lessons?
Help students
make connections
so their new knowledge will be useful in the future. Research
shows that these types of metacognitive skills should
be explicitly taught
and integrated
with the science curriculum. In SEPUP, analysis questions
are intended to help guide this reflection and learning.
-
Use assessments to build understanding.
Take advantage of the variety of assessments embedded
in the SEPUP modules. The SEPUP
Assessment System includes rubrics for designing
investigations, analyzing data,
communicating scientific information, and using
evidence. In addition
to evaluating
student understanding, assessments can be a tool
to finding out what your students think and used
as the basis for
further
instruction.
You
may want to ask students to revise their work
on an assessment after you have provided specific
feedback
on how
to
improve its quality.
^ top
|
See video of teacher guiding inquiry.
You will need Quicktime
software to view this 2.7 MB clip.
Spring 2004: Focus on Inquiry
Background info, classroom examples, bibliography, using
current events to promote inquiry, sample SEPUP activity, inquiry
and the NSES.
Download News
Download
Adobe Acrobat Reader
Guide to the SEPUP Modules
|
 |
