Inquiry Science

This lesson plan uses a poem and class discussion to help students witness how incomplete data and bias can impact scientific inferences. Included you will find a lesson overview, learning targets, materials list, step by step procedure and student handouts. Nature of Science concepts addressed include: 1. The difference between observations and inferences. 2. Interpretations may be limited by the completeness of the data. 3. Background experiences may affect the interpretations of observati

This inquiry gives students the opportunity to draw a picture of what they think a real life scientist looks like based on their background knowledge. Students then collect gender, ethnicity and other demographic information regarding all of the scientists that the students have drawn in order to get an idea of trends in the class data. Data is graphed into bar graphs and pie charts, and then compared to actual scientist demographic data that has been compiled by the National Science Foundatio