Inquiry Lab Investigation Using Duckweed

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Description
Looking for an engaging inquiry lab to introduce or reinforce scientific processes and methods? In this Inquiry Lab Investigation Using Duckweed, students will be designing an investigation to study the effect of a variable of their choosing on a simple aquatic plant, duckweed.
This resource can be easily differentiated for different student ability levels by changing the directions and amount of help that you give as students design their investigations. The typical length of time to run this lab is 10 days, but there is also a lot of leeway on time.
Students need simple, easily obtained materials: duckweed (Lemna minor), hand lenses, Petri plates, graduated cylinders, and a variable of their choosing such as lemon juice, salt, light, etc.
This product includes:
- an introductory Powerpoint
- an introduction to working with duckweed and learning how to count them
- a team brainstorming worksheet where they'll decide their variable to test and determine their procedure to set up their colonies, draw their data table(s) and keep their daily lab notes
- an editable lab report direction sheet, which you can change to reflect the level of difficulty that you want
- grading rubric for the lab report
What will your students be doing?
- watching an introductory PowerPoint
- observing duckweed as a team
- brainstorming possible variables to test
- deciding on a variable and designing their setup and data tables
- recording data for 10 days (or whatever time you set)
- creating a collaborative lab report
Your students will enjoy working with live organisms and seeing the effect of their variables. You can walk your students through many of the steps, or "let them loose" to work through them on their own. I hope you and your students enjoy it as much as we do!
You might also like my other lab activities:
Introduction to Microscopes - Letter "e" Lab
Molecular Models lab - Molecules of Life
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