"Initial thoughts" still wanted for posting at collaboration web site (http://serendipstudio.org/local/scisoc/lansdownefriends/) - email them to me (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu)
Continuing on-line conversation at http://serendipstudio.org/forum/viewforum.php?forum_id=410 |
From 31 May
Moving on ...
Inquiry skill | Questions explored | Background knowledge | Communication Ability/Awarenesses |
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Presume kids start with ability to make/learn from observations and to tell "stories", both about what will happen and about what produced what has happened (?) Initial task is to support/encourage those activities, expand their scope, begin developing sense that the products of active inquiry facilitate future inquiry.
Create continuing opportunities to take things apart, put things together, see things in larger contexts in space and time. Include self in observations/stories/explanations. Make use of detective "mysteries" that can be "solved" in a variety of ways, lead on to further questions. Create contexts that encourage making distinctions between observations and interpretations/stories. Encourage discovery of the advantages of there being multiple possible interpretations of a given set of observations, and of the importance of being deliberate in drawing interpretations from observations. Create contexts that encourage discovery of advantages of making use of observations/interpretations by others. "communal" character of science/inquiry. Encourage development of ability to criticize observations/intepretations by others. Create contexts that encourage discovery of the dependence of observations on interpretations/stories, and the uses to which that can be put. Do all this in context of the "story" of who one is, who one comes to be (cf Teaching science as rich narrative)? With continual revisiting of same questions/some same contents at successive levels of sophistication?
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