Foam
Parachutes
Ice Balloons
Process Circus
Pinhole Inquiry
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To participate
in an ongoing discussion of the Ice Balloons Activity, or
to read what other people have said, click
here.
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Ice
Balloons: Exploring the Role of Questioning in Inquiry
This
activity is designed to develop the critical inquiry skill of questioning.
The Ice Balloon Activity uses an intriguing material - frozen water
balloons - to raise questions and identify those which can become
the basis for investigations.
For the full
text of the Ice Balloons Activity,
click here.
For Figure 1,
the "Investigating Ice Balloons Directions" sheet only (on
its own page), click here. For Figure
2, the "Creating a classroom ethos ..." sheet only (on its
own page), click here. For Figure 3,
the "Examples of children's questions with Ice Balloons"
sheet only (on its own page), click here.
Then, you can print them out as you would any other document on
your computer.
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Why do it?
This activity
provides a model for teachers to help raise student's questions
and then handle those questions so they can be used as the basis
for investigations. By generating questions and doing an investigation
based on one of them, teachers recognize how to distinguish investigable
questions from non-investigable questions. This awareness is critical
if teachers are to be able to involve students in activities based
on their own genuine questions.
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How to do it?
This activity
takes at least 3 hours, several days preparation time to freeze
the water balloons, materials (see full text for greater details),
and one or more staff to facilitate discussions.
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Doing it:
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Step
1
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After
an introduction, participants in small groups generate a number
of questions about the ice balloons as they experiment with
them in an open ended way. To see what some groups have done
with the ice balloons, click here.
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Step
2
Each group chooses one of the questions they've raised to try to
answer through investigating. They try to establish criteria for
investigable questions as they go along.
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Step
3
Each group presents an example of an investigable and a non-investigable
question and their criteria for investigable questions.
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Step
4
Full group discussion of criteria for investigable questions.
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Step
5
Each group chooses a non-investigable question to try to "turn"
it into an investigable one.
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Step
6
Each group presents how they "turned" a non-investigable into
an investigable question, and the full group discusses general
strategies for "turning" questions.
Having
done it:
The Ice
Balloons Activity highlights how intriguing materials can
be used to raise questions, that some questions can be answered
by doing an investigation, and that some questions that seem
non-investigable can be "turned" into ones that can be answered
through investigation. Because it also serves as a model for
doing a very short investigation based on questions raised
by the learners, it can set the stage for doing more extended
investigations.
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To
participate in an ongoing discussion of the Ice
Balloons Activity, or to read what other people
have said, click here.
|
|
For
the full text of the Ice Balloons Activity,
click here.
For
Figure 1, the "Investigating Ice Balloons Directions"
sheet only (on its own page), click
here. For Figure 2, the "Creating a classroom
ethos ..." sheet only (on its own page), click
here. For Figure 3, the "Examples of children's
questions with Ice Balloons" sheet only (on its
own page), click here. Then,
you can print them out as you would any other document
on your computer.
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