I plan on building on last semester's work with inquiry projects in the new year. I have a perfect chance to revisit last year's project organization and address the problems that came up before they reoccur.
My first two projects:
Chemistry is going to work as a group to present an informational graphic or video about scales in the universe. Last year I got some high quality work, but many groups had trouble narrowing down the options on topics. This year I'm going to increase guided brainstorming time, so that each group ends up with a little more detail before working independently. I also have past examples to show my students now, which should help. The students will also have more background in "Fermi problems," which we've been working on more strenuously, which will help to incorporate the project more firmly into the rest of our class content.
Physical Science gets to work together to examine various types of writing on science, analyze the reasoning behind them, and come to conclusion as to reliability. My main issue last semester was reading level- it was difficult to find writing samples that were not overly involved. I've found a few more since then, and I plan to do a little more guided reading in preparation for independent work.
Overall, the first revision I'm making to a lot of my student-led investigations is to provide a little more background and guidance before students start to work on their own.
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