Scientific Inquiry, of course!

I have no doubt that every elementary and middle school student starts out either learning or reviewing Scientific Inquiry at the beginning of the school year.  I remember years ago when it was called "The Scientific Method" and it was a very rigid way of conducting a lab experiment.  Nowadays, it's all about being cyclical and the ability to start anywhere you want in the process just by questioning, observing, and inferring.

We started out with our Toothpick Lab, which was so fun because there was hardly any clean up (yay, me!) and the "wow" was fully in effect.  We bent a few toothpicks, arranged them in a star formation, added droplets of water to the center, and watched the toothpick expand before our very eyes!  This lab was a great way for the students to come up with an appropriate hypothesis and a well-written conclusion without it being too "sciency" yet.  Teachers love a good lab report and we felt we needed to review this important aspect of science.

We also incorporated metric measurements and conversions into our Scientific Inquiry unit.  Most of our students remember "King Henry Died Drinking Chocolate Milk" but were less familiar with converting units.  We set up a Metric Measurement Lab which not only gave them practice of measuring out meters, liters, and grams, but then taking it one step further and converting units.

Below are some pictures of my students participating in our Metric Measurement Lab...