Final Questions

Today, your group should arrive in class with an inquiry question or a strong idea of what your group plans to investigate this year. Please retrieve the whiteboard you used last class and set it up as below:


We will meet at the desks for each group to present their question. The group will provide the question, the change and the response. Then, each other group must provide one question or thought regarding the proposed inquiry project.

Question Planning Sheet

A space will be created on the outside wall that will become your area to report progress on the project. Each group also needs to create a web page for the project. Current requirements for web page:

• Question
• Independent (manipulated) and Dependent (Responding) variables clearly identified
• “About Us” section that gives a bit of background on each person in the group (please only use first names) and why you are interested in your group’s question.
• A location that allows people to post comments and questions.
• Anything else you want to add to your page at this time.

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