AST Inquiry

By now everyone should be slowly remembering life as a student. A variety of activities are lined up for today beginning with the introduction of our class Read Aloud. By reading The City of Ember, I hope to give us a place to talk about energy, conservation and sustainability.

During class activities:

• Book check-out & Material List
• Walking AST and listing "things" you wonder about.
• What makes a good scientific question?
• Creating an AST-based inquiry question.

Today's Key question: What makes a good scientific question?

I. Brainstorms
What do people ask questions for?

To get information	Find an answer	Support guesses
Curious	Not sure about something	Want to know something and want to be right
To make sense of something (clarify)	To know more about a topic	Interested
To find knowledge without sorting through lots of information	Learn about the environment	relationships

What types of questions are there?

• Why - a reason
• How - a process
• Yes / No - to be sure
• If...., then what will happen (relationship / prediction)
• Where
• When
• What
• Who

What does our question need?

• Time to answer
• A connection over time
• to be testable -
• we have the materials
• it must take place at AST
• I must be able to collect data
• Narrowed down to variables I can investigate

Group Questions
   - How is bug blood different from human blood?
    - Why do your fingers wrinkle after you take a bath?
    - Is rock music better than hip-hop music?
    - Why does bright light cause some people to sneeze?
    - Do smells affect people’s moods?
    - Is vegetarianism better than eating meat?

Task:

1. Decide whether your question can be answered through a scientific investigation.
2. Come up with two testable questions that relate to the problem described in the question.

Whiteboard Presentation - we will continue with this next class

1. Please make sure your original question is posted.
2. Show why you think your question can/cannot be answered through a scientific investigation.
3. Provide the two testable questions and describe what the purpose