Leaders: Tracy LaGrassa and JoAnn Gensert

Part 1 – Developing Testable Questions – Nov 4, 9:30-11:30am ET via Zoom

Part 2 – Protocols for Student Peer Review – Nov 18, 9:30-11:30am ET via Zoom

Description: Are you tired of cookbook-style science labs? Would you like to engage your students in real, student-driven independent research projects? Engaging high school and middle school students in the authentic research process stirs their curiosity and promotes creativity, while introducing them to how science is done.

PART 1. In this workshop, we will model and share resources that teach students how to develop testable research questions, design and execute their own rigorous experiments to answer those questions, use statistics to analyze their results and present their data. Follow-up meetups will provide a space for reflecting on- and refining- your process of turning your science classroom into a research lab! In this workshop participants will put on their student-hats and dig into several phenomenon/experimental models and participants will learn to scaffold each aspect of the scientific process with mini-lessons.

PART 2. Continuing our deep dive into phenomenon/experimental models, participants will look at strategies, scaffolds, and sample student work to explore how we have students write proposals and drafts, and engage in peer review, as well as how students generate a quad chart/mini-poster to report what they did and how and why they did it, showing they understand not only their experiment, but also the rationale behind their experiment and where it fits into the bigger picture.

Content will be adapted to the needs and experience of participants.