OER4Schools/Collecting and interpreting information part 2: Difference between revisions

Here are some video clips of students working on making predictions for the outcome of an enquiry that they will soon do.  Watch a few of them now (begin watching the first one from 1:34) and the rest in your own time after the session. Notice how motivated the students are and how they support and encourage each other. Think about the following questions and discuss them as a group if you have time:

The following are the steps in the scientific method as usually followed in many scientific investigations and enquiries.  '''They are not in the right order'''. Working in small groups, arrange the steps in the right order by putting the numbers 1-8 next to them.

*  Do you think it was a good idea to leave the table blank? Why?

One of the things that teachers worry about when doing enquiry based activities in the classroom is the unpredictable nature of the work that students may produce. Watch the following video and discuss the ways that you might react when a student produces an interesting but unexpected graph.

Try to encourage participants to use the opportunity as a learning one for the whole class.  This student has inadvertently discovered the beauty of a log graph, and that is to be celebrated! This is one of the benefits of EBL, there is plenty of room for creativity!

Students were measuring their pulse before and after exercise. They recorded it after 15 seconds and multiplied this by four to give the number of beats per minute. It is clear from the worksheet that this particular student needs help with how to work out the average pulse rate. The information on how to do this could have been added to the worksheet. Similarly there is no formula on the sheet for working out the BMI. Encourage participants to think about these things when they are recording and analysing their data for the enquiry activities (A-E) and when they are presenting their findings.

Make a start on analysing your data in this session. Between this session and the next, continue to analyse your data and be ready to present your findings to your colleagues during the next session You should arrange a time to get together with the other members of your group or alternatively divide up the tasks relating to the analysis and presentation between you now. You will also have a short time to finalise your presentation at the beginning of the next session .

The analysis of the data involves responding to the questions above. These questions help you evaluate your guesses, and assess whether the data collected is '''valid '''(ie. whether it can actually answer the enquiry questions) or '''reliable '''(ie. whether the data comes from a rigorous and trustworthy method of data collection cf. the discrepancies in measuring height highlighted in the videos). If you do not think the data fulfills the qualities of validity and reliability, then you should immediately highlight the problem and try to find out why this could have happened. It may be that you need to rethink or repeat the data collection process. If you are satisfied with the data collected, you can then go ahead to make sense of the data so that you are able to present a solution, or different solutions, to the rest of the participants next week.

The next session is the final session of the unit and as such it will be slightly longer than usual to allow for all participants to present some enquiry findings to the rest of the group. They will be presenting material on the enquiry activities (A-E) that they have been working on over the past few sessions as well as on the extended project/field trip.

'''Part A''' Tidy up and make sense of the data for the group enquiry activities you have worked on in this session. Decide on what would be the best way to present your ideas (e.g. charts, OpenOffice presentation) and be ready to present them at the next session.