Scientific inquiry and fiction

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Children will, in an encouraging environment, ask questions. Sometimes when reading fiction these questions will relate more to the story, to the characters, and social situations, but many of these questions will fall in the realm of science. This is where the teacher as facilitator can help students become comfortable with the process of searching for answers.

One way of doing this in the classroom might be to have an "investigation board".  When reading a story you may not want to stop everything to explore an interesting question but some of these questions certainly warrent investigation.  I have used a special white board in the past to write out questions which we might explore latter in class.  Sometimes we would chose an individual investigator (or scientist) sometimes a team and occasionally the whole class depending on what worked better with the particular question.  In one preschool class we actually had lab coats and whoever was the investigator(s) wore the coat(s).

1. A first step might be to have students come up with possible explanations based on what they already know. Their ideas might be discussed, or written down, or artistically conveyed. This will reveal much about their prior knowledge and thought processes. It will also allows them to compare their original assumptions with what is discovered during the inquiry.

2. Then participate in a learning experience related to the phenomenon under study.

a). An important part of this process might involve science trade books. There is a great diversity of good informational books on any given area… and an effective way to find information from these sources is to get into groups and compare, contrast, analyze, and evaluate the information concerning their questions.
  • Which book is most likely to contain information for a particular question?
  • How can the index, glossary, and table of contents help you find them?
  • When the books present similar information do the facts agree?
  • Why might there be disparities?
  • How might the information be verified?
b). On the other hand you often want to encourage children come up with hands-on ways of investigating the question. Help facilitate a way of exploring the question using materials available in the classroom (or materials which might be brought in for the occasion).
3. Finally, after the investigation is carried out reflection on how their initial response compares to the new concepts can be quite beneficial. Discussing what they learned, whether other people doing similar experiments might come to the same conclusion, and so on.

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