Getting Scientific with Inquiry-Based Learning

 In this weeks lab, we were challenged to build a lesson using Inquiry Based Learning. The biggest challenge I think we all faced was building a lesson that could be presented to our classmates in 30 mins and still revolved around inquiry based learning. 

Many of the ideas I had were meant to be done over many class periods and required materials that I simply didn't have. 

From early on in my brainstorming process, I knew I wanted to do something revolving seed germination but I wasn't sure how to attack it. I remember at the Florida State Fair they did an activity with germination where you place a wet cotton ball and a seed in a small baggy attached to a string. Then you seal the bag and wear it around your neck. The heat of your body causes the seed to germinate. That was my initial inspiration but I knew I needed something a little more advanced for high school students. 

My next thought was to have students change the environment in which the seed lived in and compare what happened to that seed to a control seed. I wasn't sure how to set this whole lesson up so I began searching on google for ideas. 

That's when I found almost exactly what I was looking for! 

Carolina Biological Supply Company has an amazing lesson called "An Inquiry into Seed Germination" with accompanying student worksheets (link: https://www.carolina.com/teacher-resources/Interactive/an-inquiry-into-seed-germination/tr41503.tr). The lesson covers the exact idea that I brainstormed in the beginning but is organized in a way that makes sense. So I decided to incorporate what they already have prepared into my inquiry lesson for lab.

The next challenge was deciding how I was going to break down the lesson as the full length lesson would actually be done over multiple class periods. I decided to have the students do all the prep work for their experiments and end the lesson there. 

I started off my lesson with bellwork. I gave the students less than a minute to write down one thing they know plants need to survive. 

I then had them watch a time lapse video of a seed germinating as my interest approach.

I stopped the video after about 0:53 seconds in order to save time. I then work backwards and had the students share what they came up with for the bellwork. Everyone gave some really great answers and I think it connected well to my interest approach and flowed well into introducing the activity.

Next I began to introduce the lesson. The essential question guiding this lesson was "What Factors Impact Seed Germination?". 

The objective of the day was to create an experiment that investigates one factor impacting seed germination. 

In order to ease the students into inquiry, I decided that we would do the first couple steps of the activity as a class. Some students struggle when they don't have structure or guidance so this allowed for the activity to be less daunting for those students. 

Once everyone was broken into groups of 2-3, I introduced the first step. 

I gave the students 3 minutes to create a list of factors that might affect seed germination and asked them to be ready to share with the class. After the 3 minutes, I had each group share one factor that they came up with. 

The next step was the last step we did as a class and every group spent different lengths of time completing this step.

In the second step, student were asked to pick one factor from the list they created and develop a question about seed germination that they can realistically answer through experimentation. Next, they were asked to create a hypothesis using the format "If.......then.......because.....". Once they finished this step they were were free to continue working through the rest of the worksheet. 

While groups were working on step 2, I walked around the room to make sure everyone was picking factors that were realistic and could actually be tested through experimentation.

Students then had the rest of the class period to complete the worksheet and develop their experiment. 

The ticket out the door was to turn in the worksheet with both group members name on it. Before the next class, I would go through each groups worksheet to provide critiques on their work, make sure that what they plan to do is realistic and figure out what materials each group needs. 

In the next class students would make any changes needed to their experiment based on the feedback that they received and then conduct their experiment.  

Overall, I really enjoyed this lab and it reminded me of a lot of the activities I did back in my high school Ag class. 

Pictures of the worksheet students received: