Planning and Carrying Out Investigations [Video]

—

Transcript Provided by YouTube:

00:00
hi it’s Paul Andersen and in this video
00:01
I’m gonna dig more deeply into planning
00:03
and carrying out investigations this is
00:05
a picture of me when I was a kid playing
00:06
in a science lab it’s so much fun to be
00:09
a scientist or to do science or to be in
00:11
a science class but as I move through
00:13
middle and high school I start doing
00:15
labs that were more cookbook labs and I
00:17
spend up most of my time just doing real
00:19
detailed lab write-ups and so we want
00:21
kids planning their own investigations
00:23
and carrying them out now this video is
00:26
a part of a series of videos I’m doing
00:28
on scientific inquiry it’s got a bunch
00:29
of resources that go along with it I’ll
00:31
put a website down below but where does
00:33
investigations come in well we should
00:35
always start with a phenomena that
00:37
phenomena we should then use questioning
00:40
to allowed kids to come up with a bunch
00:42
of different explanations or explanatory
00:43
models that they have and then we should
00:45
systematically check each of those
00:47
models to see which of those are correct
00:49
so we can come up with a shared
00:51
classroom model through argumentation
00:53
and so here’s a rubric for doing
00:55
investigations but if you look at it
00:57
there are a couple of parts to it there
00:59
is what you think that carrying out
01:00
investigations where we’re doing that
01:03
experimentation but before that we
01:05
actually have the planning so when I
01:07
have students doing this in class I want
01:09
to put a stop sign kind of halfway
01:11
through I want them to determine what
01:13
kind of investigation are they going to
01:15
do what kind of evidence are they going
01:17
to collect but then I want to meet with
01:18
them and I want to talk about what’s
01:19
your plan for you’re doing your
01:21
investigation for two reasons it’s
01:23
really hard to come up with a good
01:24
research question that you’re gonna do
01:26
and also it’s a safety concern the worst
01:28
thing you could do as a science teacher
01:29
is just say here’s the equipment go do
01:31
investigations you want to make sure
01:33
what they’re doing they’re going to get
01:34
actual evidence and it’s going to be
01:36
safe as well and so if we look at the
01:38
elements of a good investigation we
01:40
should be addressing some kind of a
01:42
phenomena we should identify the
01:44
evidence we’re going to have and then we
01:46
should have a plan and when we’re done
01:47
collecting that evidence we should have
01:49
a better explanation of what’s going on
01:51
now I use graphic organizers to get kids
01:54
to this point this is one I used for 10
01:55
years as a teacher on this lab form they
01:58
have to fill out everything on the left
01:59
side before I ever let them go this is
02:01
one I did based on cause and effect I’ve
02:03
used it in middle school classrooms as
02:05
well and this is the most basic how can
02:07
I test it how can I investigate it kind
02:10
of a graphic organizer and I’ll put a
02:11
link to all of these down below
02:13
I’ve got teacher directions as what I do
02:15
what are my teacher moves but
02:17
essentially what you’re trying to do is
02:18
have kids plan what they’re gonna do
02:20
before they actually do the
02:22
investigation and then they’re gonna
02:23
have to figure out what didn’t work and
02:25
how can we improve the investigation to
02:27
get better evidence now what I’ve found
02:29
is that this practice of planning and
02:31
carrying out investigations is really
02:33
difficult it’s going to take students
02:34
year after year and then within the year
02:37
we’re gonna have to do this time after
02:39
time to get better at it and the reason
02:40
I think it’s difficult is twofold number
02:42
one you have to come up with some good
02:44
research question and you’re gonna have
02:46
to help students to develop that skill
02:48
and then also they have a they have a
02:50
hard time coming up with a controlled
02:52
experiment where we’re just changing one
02:54
thing at a time or how we’re just
02:55
accurately measuring one thing at a time
02:58
and so the first thing I would want to
03:00
focus on is their ability to ask good
03:02
research questions now you need to know
03:04
this when kids are looking at a
03:06
phenomena they’re kind of thinking about
03:07
it in probably one of four different
03:09
ways so let’s say we’re looking at this
03:10
phenomena I’m dropping a ball there are
03:13
two balls one of them will bounce and
03:15
the other ones well so if we’re looking
03:16
at those I want students doing
03:19
investigations that are based on their
03:21
own wondering of their own models of
03:23
what they think is going on so some
03:24
students will think there’s a property
03:26
difference there’s an observational
03:27
difference between the two and so I
03:29
might say let’s get that down to a
03:31
question and something like is the ball
03:33
that stops more dense
03:34
well now their investigation is going to
03:36
be accurate measurement of the density
03:38
of those two different spheres or maybe
03:40
they have some kind of an explanation
03:41
they think they know what’s going on it
03:43
has to do with the surface its landing
03:44
on then we want to use the word cause or
03:47
effect or how does the surface affect
03:49
the bounce of the ball is that research
03:50
question is going to move them in the
03:51
right direction sometimes they’ll be
03:53
thinking more broadly about the system
03:55
itself and maybe energy has been lost
03:56
somewhere in the system then we help
03:58
define that question maybe Energy’s lost
04:00
as sound or vibrations where lots of
04:02
times they’re thinking of it through an
04:03
engineering perspective or we might be
04:05
asking them to think about it through an
04:07
engineering perspective how could we use
04:09
this material maybe to make safer mouth
04:11
guards and so helping them formulate
04:13
those research questions is get me a lot
04:15
of dividends down the line the other
04:17
thing I think students struggle with
04:19
this is idea of how do I come up with a
04:21
controlled experiment how do I change
04:23
one thing and see how that affects
04:25
something now so how do I get D
04:26
tailed observations if you’ve ever
04:28
judged a science fair you know what I’m
04:30
talking about a lot of that is not
04:31
science it’s usually just demonstrations
04:33
the quintessential example would be I’m
04:36
gonna grab plants and give them
04:38
different material and what they’ll do
04:40
is try to change multiple things at a
04:41
time and they really don’t know what
04:43
happened and so a tool that I’ve
04:45
developed with a teacher friend Glenn
04:47
Bradbury we came up with this idea of
04:49
science cube science cubes look like
04:51
this and what you do is you put your two
04:53
variables on the cubes let’s say we’re
04:55
doing an explanatory kind of an
04:57
investigation or cause and effect we
04:59
could say what things could affect plant
05:01
growth maybe it’s the amount of water or
05:03
the temperature or the amount of
05:04
fertilizer so we put that on one of
05:06
these cubes on the other one we say how
05:09
could we measure plant growth so maybe
05:10
it could be the weight or the height or
05:13
the number of leaves and then students
05:15
can simply roll the dice and if you roll
05:17
the dice you forced one independent
05:20
variable or one cause and then one
05:22
effect
05:23
what does everything else on the cube
05:25
become it becomes the constants that
05:26
we’re going to have in the experiment
05:28
things that we’re gonna have to keep the
05:29
same now you want to move away from that
05:31
scaffold to one where they’re starting
05:33
to brainstorm what are all the things
05:35
that we could change lots of times I’ll
05:37
use I got some of these whiteboard cubes
05:38
on Amazon and I could just write on it
05:40
with the students and we can say okay
05:41
what could we investigate this
05:43
experiment and then you can also
05:45
subdivide your class so we’re not all
05:46
doing the same thing now one thing that
05:49
it’s teachers will always ask me when
05:50
I’m talking about this idea of planning
05:52
and carrying out investigations they’ll
05:54
say well haven’t we done this isn’t this
05:56
just the scientific method and I would
05:58
say no scientific method is what it
06:00
looks like at the end so when you’re
06:02
done and you’ve said this is my
06:04
independent variable this is my
06:05
dependent variable these were like my
06:08
procedure you know that at the end and
06:10
so that’s more of you communicating the
06:12
information of what you’ve learned when
06:14
you’re going into the lab what it looks
06:16
like is failure you try something that
06:18
doesn’t work you try something else it
06:20
doesn’t work you tweak your procedure so
06:23
you can get a little bit more evidence
06:24
and then finally we have evidence that
06:26
we’re willing to present and share that
06:28
and a lot of the time we do that in the
06:30
order of a scientific method but no
06:31
scientist could ever come into a lab and
06:33
say step one
06:34
gather material step two then you’re
06:36
really just following this kind of a
06:37
cookbook understanding so that’s
06:39
planning and carrying out in
06:40
investigations it’s gonna take time for
06:42
our kids to learn these skills how to
06:44
gather evidence that’s valid and how to