MODIFY

"The problem is to provide students with enough guidance to lead them into thinking and the forming of insights but not so much as to give everything away and thus destroy the attendant intellectual experience.”

Arnold Arons

DESIGNING AN INQUIRY-BASED LAB

BASIC GUIDED INQUIRY STRATEGY

A simple strategy to help students identify and describe the big ideas of a laboratory is to model the activity and ask three focus questions:

• “What do you observe?”
• “What can you measure?”
• “What can you change?”

Learn more about QUESTIONING STRATEGIES

5E APPROACH

A valuable pedagogical approach is the 5E Instructional Model. The link explains the five stages of the model and provides an example:

Using the 5E Model

MODIFYING TRADITIONAL LABS

The following techniques can be used to modify traditional labs to inquiry-based laboratories:

QUESTIONS:

• Change the purpose statement of the activity in question.
• Involve students in activities where they generate questions to investigate.
• Make the question relevant to the student.

EVIDENCE:

• Eliminate parts of the lab and give students opportunities to define variables, develop procedures, set up data tables and make predictions.

EXPLANATION:

• Move the teacher's explanations and textbook reading from before the lab to after the lab.
• Expect students to develop evidence-based explanations as a central step in lab work.
• Engage students in the analysis of data by looking for patterns, using evidence and logic to support explanations, and honing their skills at constructing evidence-based explanations.

COMMUNICATION:

• Provide opportunities to present explanations to other audiences through discussion, writing, collaborative lab report or video lab.
• Ask students to evaluate the logic of their explanations in terms of evidence.

*Three Questions Can Change Your Labs for the Better. Patricia Blanton, Phys. Teach. 47, 248 (2009)

BACK TO: AP PHYSICS LABORATORY EXPERIENCE