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Brie Stark's picture

Developing Own Project

From a student perspective, I thought that this project could be expanded into an inquiry-based project developing hypothesis creation and then subsequent self-creation of an experiment to test the hypothesis.  I think that this would fit well into the inquiry system because the laboratory would be entirely subjective: the student would have to write out their hypothesis (or hypotheses), the methods they would use, detailed experiment steps, summaries, graphs, etc.  This would be great for an upper level high school class because of the freedom of the project.  We did something like this in chemistry, where we had to design our own project in order to test a given hypothesis (like the gas law); it didn't matter if our experiment agreed or disagreed with the gas law, but rather, what we did to develop our project.  This stressed the developmental aspect of experimentation rather than the conclusion.  The student had to explain their own thoughts, describe what resulted (both favorable and perhaps unfavorable) but also analyze how they, themselves, had designed the project and what improvements could be made in the future.  This gives them an upper-hand in the learning process because, instead of being given a concrete lab with set instructions, they leave themselves open to exploring (and, of course, failure) but ultimately learn more, especially if they are hands-on learners, like myself.

 

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