Dr.

Wall Inquiry in Science Reflection

The day Dr. Wall came to discuss with us about teaching science
was prime timing for me. Because my unit is a science unit, I was
ready to listen to any piece of advice that was offered on how to teach
science. He began by telling us that we need to develop a research
question to start our lesson. This question may be something like
What do you think effects how far an object rolls? Developing a
question will begin to stir the students thinking and make them play a
more active role in the lesson. This question creates curiosity in the
students minds, and they begin to wonder what materials or other
things might change the action of the object. After the question is
developed, the students need to develop a statement that supports
this question. A sample statement would be, The more massive an
object, the further it will roll. This statement is something that is
testable. Now that the statement has been developed, the students
would take the opportunity to generate ideas as to what they think
may impact the motion of this object. After ideas have been created,
students are able to put their thinking into action and test their
statements and ideas. This is the point where we see so much handson activity taking place in a science lesson. Applying these ideas to my
unit was something that was beneficial for me to do. The new science
standards are written in ways that make it easy to develop the
research question. The question can be presented to the students, and

they will in turn develop the testable statement. While this may take a
little extra thinking and planning on the teachers part, it allows the
students to become fully involved in their learning and take action. I
have been able to apply this to my unit through the use of experiments
each day. The students will take part in a different experiment at the
end of each lesson. They will be presented with a question about the
content studied that day, and they will have to develop a statement
that can be tested. They will generate ideas with one another, and
they will explore these new concepts and ideas. If a teacher simply
stood at the front of the class lecturing the students about the science
topic, they would not be engaged and would not retain as much
information. Using this argumentation process to challenge students to
think deeper will create a more conducive atmosphere to learning.