I am researching what a research based classrooom looks like and this final blog is introducing a curriculum guide that you can use. The guide is located here and it is free. The guide is called Doing Science: The Process of Scientific Inquiry and it was created under from a large development team under a contract for the National Institutes of Health. The curriculum was tested and modified over a two year period before it was published in 2005.
The objectives listed in the guide are:
- To help students understand the basic aspects of scientific inquiry.
- To provide students with an opportunity to practice and refine their critical-thinking skills.
- To convey to students the purpose of scientific research.
- To encourage students to think in terms of these relationships now and as they grow older.
The guide is designed to compliment the existing life science curriculum currently in force and meets the National Science Education Standards at both the state and local levels. The grade levels are grades 5 - 8.
The format of the lessons in the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) 5E format.
The five Es are:
Engage
Explore
Explain
Elaborate
Evaluate
Pages 9 and 10 have a nice chart that outline what is and is not consistent with teh BSCS 5E model for both teachers and students. The curriculum guide is very long as it contains lessons to use throughout the year, however the beginning outlines what the guide is and what their research found as effective science teaching.
Pages 19 - 33 is an article about the process of scientific inquiry as is very interesting. The article outlines that scientific inquiry is not only an effective way to teach science, it is also a good topic to teach grade 5 - 8 students about. The concept is that students can learn about scientific inquiry by doing scientific inquiry. This is similar to our Science Methods class that Professor Kruse is teaching.
The remaining 100 pages are lesson plan and the masters that you will need to complete the lessons. The lessons are broken into four major groups.
The groups are:
Lesson 1 - Inquiring Minds
Lesson 2 - Working with Questions
Lesson 3 - Conducting a Scientific Investigation
Lesson 4 - Pulling It All Together
These lesson groups are very similar to the steps of the learning cycle: exploration (lesson 1), concept development (lesson 2 and 3), an application (lesson 4).
Overall this is a useful guide for grades 5 - 8 and a good reference that could be followed with developmentally appropriate lessons for any grade level.
The part in the article about teaching about scientific inquiry at grades 5-8 is interesting. Are kids are lower developmental levels not ready to learn about the "how"? Shouldn't we be staring inquiry form the moment they begin school? Maybe students at the younger levels are just naturally curious? I think maybe. But then what happened along the way to stop that curiosity, and make us subsequently then have to teach it? I realize this question is way beyond your article, but it made me think about the intrinsic system of teaching science in elementary schools. have we gotten way off base, far away from curiosity? I really appreciate your attitude about inquiry based teaching , none-the-less.
ReplyDeleteKen,
ReplyDeleteThis is a really good resource, it's not everyday that we think about how one lesson could be teaching students the inquiry lesson. This wraps up a lot of what we've been talking in class and also is a great resource for teachers who are unsure or need help teaching about scientific inquiry, which I think were all going to need a little help starting off. I think it may be kind of hard to keep students interested and engaged when teaching the process of the inquiry based teaching. This is a great resource Ken!