Inquiry, Step 2

Previously I wrote about my general approach to inquiry in physics this year.  In short, I tried to have the students form questions and design experiments when presented with a phenomenon to investigate.  In today’s post I would like to explain where all of this led our classes.

After a few weeks of lab activities, I saw a path forward that would give the students scaffolding towards the goal of becoming resourceful and skilled in inquiry and analysis. As well, this scheme was planned to give a holistic approach to learning physics which contrasted with the Standards Based Grading that breaks learning into smaller chunks.

My first step in this process was to inform the students that we would have a lab practicum, where their skills in inquiry would be required and called upon.  One the prime motivations for this was that many students weren’t focused on the labs we were doing.  Some students would work really hard on a lab while others would float along and just wait for the conclusion to come out in a class discussion.  Each lab was concluded with a whiteboard meeting, where students would share the results and discoveries with each other.  Throughout the year these whiteboard meetings were done quite poorly. While individual whiteboards are often done well, it was almost impossible to get the students to discuss what they had been doing.  I can’t help think that most of my students have had their internal inquiry beaten out of them by textbook learning, and they have a really hard time stepping out of their subservient role.  These are kids that have had a lot of success with what they’ve been doing, and having them speak up and voice their new ideas seems to be a struggle.  As I mentioned in my previous post, two of the labs we conducted were written up as reports and handed in.  The first was returned with feedback while the second lab report was graded.

In conjunction with preparing for the lab practicum, I had the students do some goal-less problems.  I was first introduced to this idea via Kelly O’Shea’s blog.  The general idea is to present a scenario to the students, and have them analyze it and find as many unknowns as possible.  This activity has strong links to inquiry in the area of asking questions, albeit not involving hands-on lab activities.  The goal-less problems fit into my scheme in three ways.  First, it was meant to help the students ask questions. Secondly, it was a type of practice for the analysis I would ask them to do in their lab practicum.  Thirdly, the goal-less problems were meant to keep the students thinking about topics that were (hopefully) learned but not presently focused on - they were a type of on-going review.

About a week before the lab practicum our physics classes went to PlayLand for a day of Amusement Park Physics.  Once again the students were asked to come up with their own inquiry questions.  In many ways the PlayLand assignment was like a goal-less problem.

The final step in my inquiry scheme was to do the actual Lab Practicum.  For this, the students were each given a device to analyze along with allowable test equipment.  They were told to investigate the motion of the device and analyze as much as they could. In many ways this lab practicum was like a hands-on goal-less problem.  Below is the rubric I used for the practicum.

Upon reflection I would say that our inquiries were focused on having the students ask their own questions. Perhaps this doesn’t seem like a very large goal to aspire to but the reality is that it’s a skill that is sadly lacking.  It’s been said before by many others: in public education we take young kids that have a thirst for learning and asking questions, and we slowly beat the pulp out of them until they quietly sit at their desk, doing what they’re told to, answering worksheet questions and doing their homework. This is what I think I see in my students. However, I think I also see change all around me, and for the better.  I certainly have a lot of improvements to make in this regard, which will be the topic of my upcoming third post on inquiry.