Ross 10/24

I haven't had many serious student-led activities this week.  My physical science students have been investigating phase changes, and after some introduction and a standardized experiment, the students got to plan their own experiment over phase changes.  It was a day and a half activity, and students investigated freezing, boiling, melting, and evaporating, with pretty good results, concluding with another writing activity.  My chemistry students have done a few more cookbook labs, but without time for extending into inquiry.

My next planned activity is a longer inquiry for my physical science students.  In hopes of getting more thought into the experimental plan, a longer period of student involvement, and more authentic questions, I'm going to start the project more slowly.  I'm planning on starting out with some research- after students decide on their topic, they'll look into what is already known and what experiments others have done.  This will be turned in and reviewed before students plan their final experiment.  The other section I hope to improve is writing instructions.  My physical science students don't seem to be getting the hang of writing instructions which are clear enough to let someone else conduct the experiment, which is a big part of science.  I may have to do some activities focusing solely on instruction-writing.