Home › Forums › Inquiry and resource design › Yr 8 Inquiry in Science – Friction
I’m currently working on an inquiry in Year 8 Physics on friction. I’m using an existing investigation as my starting point and I thought it might be useful to others who are adapting materials using FOSIL to chart our trials and tribulations during the FOSILisation process.
I want to make sure that the inquiry is based on sound physics principles as well as drawing on broader scientific issues about reliability and precision. Collaboration with the library team and other teachers will be important as I’m a chemistry teacher by training and my physics knowledge is a little rusty! We are fortunate that Jenny Toerien in the library is a physicist and able to advise on the physics as well as the inquiry process.
More to follow very soon…
Draft 1 has been completed and sent to Nayan (Head of KS3 Science) and Jenny (librarian) for their thoughts. I didn’t set out to produce a booklet, but it has sort of ended up that way. I was rather pleased with how easily the CREST and other materials we have developed (available in the FOSIL Resources section) have been to adapt.
My aim has been to shift the purpose of the task away from the production of a final project (Express) and towards the steps involved in carrying out an inquiry in science to answer a particular question (investigate and Construct) whilst using most of the existing teaching materials. This inquiry is designed to follow on from a ‘follow the recipe’ class experiment on how friction changes as the mass of an object changes in a previous lesson, which acts as a pilot too.
One thing I’m wrestling with at the moment is where the evaluation of data and method fits into the inquiry cycle. I’m not sure whether it falls into the reflection stage or not. It either fits really well, and is a really sensible way for reflection to occur in science inquiries, or it’s a really bad fit; there is no middle ground!
I’ve uploaded my first draft of the first page and evaluation pages, which I think may change a bit before we have something ready to roll out to other Year 8 teachers.
My next stage is to act on the feedback from colleagues and to use Elizabeth Hutchinson’s template to produce an overview of the resource and where it fits in to the topic.