..stimulates and excites pupils' curiosity about phenomena and events in the world around them" (the National Curriculum, 2006) and that science also "satisfies this curiosity with knowledge." (the National Curriculum, 2006) Scientific inquiry teaches students investigate skills in the areas of: (1) Planning; (2) Obtaining and Presenting Evidence; (3) Exploration; and (4) Consideration of evidence and making evaluations. In the area of planning students ask questions and then make decisions how to search out the answers to those questions. Students use first-hand experience and simple information sources for locating answers to these questions and as well enter a thought process about the results of decisions and learn to make comparisons. In obtaining and presenting evidence the students learn to follow instructions in the lab in order to avoid risks to themselves and others and make exploration through use of the senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste as appropriate while making observations and recording those observations and measurements. Finally, students communicate their observations and findings through use of speech and writing, drawing, tables, graphs and pictures. In the application of consideration of the evidence and making evaluations, comparisons are made by students and patterns and associations are identified. Also, students make a review of their own work and go on to explain their work to other students.
V. The SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY MODEL is related by EDQUEST which contains specific steps including: (1) Problem statement (initial inquiry); (2) Hypothesis (Predicting); (3) Experimental Design (Materials and Procedure); (4) Data Collection (Observations/Measurements); (5) Analysis/Interpretation of the Data (Inferring); (6) Drawing Conclusions (Answering the question/problem); and (7) Extension (further inquiry). (EDQUEST, 2007) the illustration of this model is shown in Figure 2.
The Scientific Inquiry Model
Source: EDQUEST (2007)
EDQUEST (2007) states that Science Process Skills include the following with the accompanying descriptions: (1) Observing: Using all the senses; (2) Classifying: Grouping related objects and ideas; (3) Quantifying: Using numbers & measurements related to length, width, volume and ratios; (4) Communicating: Describing verbally or non-verbally, tabulating, graphing; (5) Interpreting Data: Explanation of an observation; (6) Hypothesis: A
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