Teaching Inquiry: Can You Walk the Walk?

1. Teaching Inquiry:Can You Walk the Walk? Emilie Drobnes Goddard Space Flight Center Wil van der Veen New Jersey Astronomy Center for Education

2. How Students Learn Principle #1: Engage Prior Understandings Principle #2: The Essential Role of Factual Knowledge and Conceptual Frameworks in Understanding Principle #3: The Importance of Self-Monitoring From: How Students Learn (NRC, 2005)

3. Principle #3The Importance of Self-Monitoring Read the following passage from a literary critic, and pay attention to the strategies you use to comprehend: If a serious literary critic were to write a favorable, full-length review of How Could I Tell Mother She Frightened My Boyfriends Away, Grace Plumbuster’s new story, his startled readers would assume that he had gone mad, or that Grace Plumbuster was his editor’s wife. (SOURCE: Whimbey and Whimbey (1975, p. 42).

4. Learning Cycles FERA Focus – Explore – Reflect - Apply From: Science for All Children (NSRC, 1996) OPERA Open – Prior – Experience – Reflect - Apply From: What are the Similarities Between Scientific Research and Science Education Reform (Morrow, 2005)

5. Sundials • Students observe the patterns of day and night and • the movements of the shadows of objects on the • Earth during the course of a day. • How would you explore students’ ideas and preconceived notions? • How would you carry out the experiment? • How would you help students reflect on the experiment? • How would you help students apply their new understandings?

6. Contact Information Emilie Drobnes emilie.drobnes@gsfc.nasa.gov Wil van der Veen wvanderv@raritanval.edu http://sdoepo.gsfc.nasa.gov/presentations/