Science Education - Elementary Methods

Guided Discovery / Guided Inquiry
Engagement
An event or question that helps students make connections with what they know and can do. ‘elicit their own existing conceptions’

Exploration
Hands-on activity to generate a common experience. Teacher guides, observes, and encourages with questions. Formative assessment can be incorporated. ‘allow students to test these ideas against observable events using everyday materials’

Explanation/ Invention
Students describe and explain findings. Teacher helps them pull their ideas together into coherent thoughts.
Concepts and processes are clarified, defined. Observations may be operationally defined. (interpretations are 'invented')
‘inspire students to decide on more effective explanations or models when events often do not match predictions based upon these original conceptions’

Elaboration/ Discovery
Concepts are applied to new situations, knowledge and skills are strengthened, extended, and sometimes challenged; hands-on.

Evaluation/ Assessment
Students assess their understanding/knowledge. Outcomes are evaluated through assessment activities.

The Learning Cycle    http://www.si.edu/nsrc/pubs/stc/overv.htm
The "Focus-Explore-Reflect-Apply" learning cycle incorporated into the STC units is based on research findings about children’s learning. These findings indicate that knowledge is actively constructed by each learner and that children learn science best in a hands-on experimental environment where they can make their own discoveries.

The steps of the learning cycle are as follows:
Focus: Explore and clarify the ideas that children already have about the topic.
Explore: Enable children to engage in hands-on exploration of the objects, organisms, and science phenomena to be investigated.
Reflect: Encourage children to discuss their observations and to reconcile their ideas. Then facts / concepts are clarified and 'notes' are taken.
Apply: Help children discuss and apply their new ideas in new situations.

The learning cycle gives students opportunities to develop increased understanding of important scientific concepts and to develop positive attitudes toward science.
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Activity Based Methods: Guided Discovery / Learning Cycle
Pathways to School Improvement    Perspectives of Hands-On Science Teaching
Constructivist Learning Strategies    Inquiry, General Points

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Possible Examples:
An application of inquiry based teaching Plastics Analysis

Try these sites for more on cognitive strategies:
http://muskingum.edu/~cal/database/Database.html
http://jac.sbs.ohio-state.edu/cable/pedagogy/Philosophies/Learning_Strategies/learning_strategies.htm
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~best/html/learning/frames.htm

Inquiry Based Lessons, General Points

Activities must contain the essential features of classroom inquiry, as described in Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards (National Research Council, 2000.

Be aware that it is possible for learners in such science inquiries could draw conclusions rather than formulate explanations (Trowbridge, Bybee, and Powell, 2000):

1. Learners are engaged by scientifically oriented questions.
(Scientifically oriented questions may be stated explicitly or may be implied as a task.)

2. Learners give priority to evidence, which allows them to draw conclusions and/or develop and evaluate explanations that address scientifically oriented questions.

3. Learners draw conclusions and/or formulate explanations from evidence to address scientifically oriented questions.