Science

**Bennett, Katie, and Laurel Hiebert. "Growing up in the Ocean: Complex Life Cycles of Common Marine Invertebrates."** //**Science Activities: Classroom Projects and Curriculum Ideas**//  **46.4 (2010): 18-25.** //**ERIC**// **. EBSCO. Web. 28 Sept. 2010.**

In this article, Bennet and Hiebert take a commonly associated word, in this case, metamorphosis, and expand students’ thinking on the word through inquiry based learning. They start off by having the teacher ask the students about what animals go through the metamorphosis process. Butterflies and frogs appear to be the most common answer among students. After the discussion is over, the teacher may begin their guided inquiry. A blank sheet is handed out and the students are asked to draw what they think the infant lifeforms of certain organisms, such as crabs, barnacles, sand dollars, and starfish look like. Most, if not all, the students should draw “minuscule replicas of the adults” (18). This is because most students, when asked about biological development, usually think infants are small versions of the adults and simply grow bigger and bigger. After all of the students have finished their drawings, slides of an infant star fish are shown, which looks drastically different from it’s adult form. The students are, then, guided through the definition of metamorphosis and asked what animals, that they can think of undergo this process. More questions are asked about how these animals move, and what they eat during these different developmental stages of their lives. The students are separated into groups to observe and record differences between adult crabs, the larva stage, and the mid-life stage as well as draw pictures about noticeable difference between each form the crab takes. The students inquire about the many differences each stage of metamorphosis the crab goes through, which is the purpose of this exercise. The purpose is to build on the students’ basic skills of inquiry through detailed and careful observations, asking questions they think of and trying to find answers to their questions, which will, hopefully lead to more questioning about life in the ocean or life science in general. (Colin Ramsey)

** **  **  Ketelhut, Diane Jass, et al. "A multi-user virtual environment for building and assessing higher order inquiry skills in science." //British Journal of Educational Technology// 41.1 (2010): 56-68. //Academic Search Premier//. EBSCO. Web. 26 Sept. 2010. **  ** ** In the article **"**A multi-user virtual environment for building and assessing higher order inquiry skills in science,” author Diane Ketelhut explores the pedagogies available for infusing inquiry into standards-based science curriculum through technology in the classroom. She emphasizes the necessity of changing science classrooms back to inquiry-based instruction, rather than the dry test preparation for high-stakes standardized testing. Her experiment required an experimental group of students use a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) as a pedagogical inquiry vehicle, who would then be compared to a controlled group taught with standard paper-based curriculum. Her goal is to see whether “educational MUVEs, which resemble the entertainment and communication media students use outside of school, can re-engage them in learning,” (Ketelhut, 58). The MUVE used in the experiment is called River City, which focuses on building inquiry skills while teaching content related to national standards. The students explore the biology and ecology of the virtual land by interacting with other avatars and by gathering data in a manner similar to an actual scientist. They form a hypothesis and “after testing their hypothesis, students analyze their data using graphs and tables, and then write an authentic lab report on their findings in a ‘Letter to the Mayor of River City,’” (Ketelhut, 60). The results of her test varied across the board, with a number of factors affecting outcome, such as gender, past success in science classes, and the pedagogical learning theory applied to the virtual environment. She concludes that virtual environment-based curricula can teach the required standards successfully while developing complex inquiry skills and an interest for learning in the students, often just as well or better than the traditional approaches do. In a modern culture where high-stakes standardized tests are valued, Ketelhut argues that her findings prove that testing used in isolation of other information can inaccurately categorize a student’s understanding of material. (Megan Woodruff)

According to the article “ Cultivating Curious Minds: Teaching for innovation through Open-Inquiry learning” by Jean Sausele, “Children’s innovative thinking sets sail when the natural inquisitiveness they bring to the learning table is inspired” (2). This quote is the reasoning behind the open-inquiry learning process described in this article. Sausele is a teacher at an elementary school where she uses a process of learning by which her students learn from experimenting on their own. She sets up a basis for the lab lesson by using guiding and intriguing questions to excite her students on the topic she is introducing. She then provides the materials needed for the lab lesson but, the rest is up to the inquiry of the students. Sausele never truly knows where the lesson will end because that is up to her students to decide. The children then take their guided inquisitive energy to learn and explore with science. When challenges arise they are not given answers to questions by their teacher so in turn the students learn to rely on each other for help. Through this process the students learn to collaborate with each other to further process their findings. In this process they use the idea that two minds are greater than one. There collaborative findings are used to learn from each other and transfer their learning to gain more understanding of the content. The transfer of learning is used to gain a deeper understanding of how the information in their findings can be applied in real world situations. This process of connective thinking intrigues the student’s interests and leaves them wanting to learn more because when children are interested they can’t deny the need to learn. (Erin Niles) **Wolf, Maya, and Alix Laferriere. "Crawl into Inquiry-Based Learning."** //**Science Activities**//  **46.3 (2009): 32-38.** //**Academic Search Premier**// **. EBSCO. Web. 14 Sept. 2010.**
 * Knodt, Jean Sausele. "Cultivating Curious Minds: Teaching for Innovation through Open-Inquiry Learning." //Teacher Librarian// 37.1 (2009): 15-22. //Academic Search Premier//. EBSCO. Web. 14 Sept. 2010.**

Maya Wolf and Alix Laferriere give an example on how easy it is to gets students engaged into inquiry-based learning. One of the easiest methods is to use life science, such as a classroom pet, and in this case, a hermit crab. The authors demonstrate through a lesson plan style of writing on how to bring inquiry into this experiment. Students are presented with a KWL (what they __K__ now, what they __W__ <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">ant to know, and what they’ve <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">__L__ <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">earned) chart (33) and fill in the sections appropriately. The crabs are, then, brought out and the children will then begin brainstorming a classroom hypothesis based on their observations. Once a hypothesis is reached, in this case, “Do crabs prefer sandy or rocky beaches,” the classroom experiment begins. The students separate into groups and run a series of tests to arrive at a conclusion for their hypothesis. The results are discussed as a class as each group picks a member to report their results. While the conclusion they arrived at was not clear, based on their results being too varied, the objective of the experiment was to get the students engaged into the process of inquiry, asking questions they could test, and to come up with ways through experimentation to answer these questions. Furthermore, the students continued to question further how they could have arrived at a more concrete answer. Suggestions from giving the experiment more time to modifying the parameters under which the experiment was conducted show only the tip of the iceberg of the children’s learning process and how much they are capable of wondering about the world they live in. (Colin Ramsey)