Inquiry-Based Learning

Inquiry-Based Teaching is the art of creating situations in which students take the role of scientists. In these situations, students take the initiative to observe and question phenomena; pose explanations of what they see; devise and conduct tests to support or contradict their theories; analyze data; draw conclusions from experimental data; design and build models; or any combination of these.

These learning situations are open-ended in that they do not aim to achieve a single "right" answer. Nevertheless, students work under clear standards. They learn to observe keenly and thoroughly and to pose questions that are answerable, in part or in whole, through some meaningful test or exploration. They engage in trial and error, and they learn to analyze and reason carefully.

Inquiry based lessons and activities answer the following questions:

Is It Inquiry?

1. Do students discover a phenomenon?
2. Do students design, in whole or in part, an experiment to answer a specific question or test an idea?
3. Do students devise their own ways to record data?
4. Do students analyze their own data to reach a conclusion?
5. Do students construct a model of their own design to test an idea about a physical phenomenon?