The information in these slides was shared by Louise Maine, TeachersFirst contributor and MySciLife Implementation Coach for The Source for Learning, Inc. during the STEM Playground session of ISTE 2017 in San Antonio, TX June 25-28, 2017.

1. Inquiry in Biology
Prepared by
Louise Maine
TeachersFirst Contributor and
MyScilife Implementation Coach

2. Goal: Change the education experience
● Problem solving
● Collaboration
● Critical thinking
● Voice & choice
● Empower
students

3. Backward design - what should students know?
● Look at Big Ideas or
standards
● How is content grounded
in life?
● What should they really
understand?

4. Identify question or problem
● Meaningful
● Expand open ended questions
● Introduce project first
● Require collaboration
● Problem with no right answer
● Content needed to have more
info to answer problem
● Reframe the question

5. Design your class
Project students will work for
● Anchors the unit
● Essential question
● Project information
● Include resources
● Balance of team and individual work
Unit content
● Playlist of content to learn
● Scaffold
● Create Hands-on Challenges to use content
Assessments
● Formative
● Metacognition
● Summative - Self and group

6. Collaboration
-Inclusion
-Equity
-Fluid groups
-Individual work informs
group work
-Modeling
-Rely on each other as source
of information
-Build check ins

7. Assessment
● Identify the skills
and content
required
● Formative
● Summative
● Self-assessment
● Peer assessment
● Metacognition

8. Reflection
● What have you learned
by doing this project?
● What skills have you
developed which you
can use elsewhere?
● How do you feel about
your project?
● What are you
most/least proud of?
● What would you do
differently next time?

9. Issues
Teamwork
● Balance choice of teams
● Skills, ability, motivation
Motivation
● Grades
● Focus on content more than product
● Create challenges to meet
Focus on Skills
● Writing clearly
● Speaking clearly
● Organizing information

10. How to help students
Issues
● Areas of interest
● Concerns
● Skills they need
Process
● Scaffold
● Provide info to start
● Caution jumping to early decisions
Product
● What will it look like?
● Options
● Feedback and critique

11. Designing a unit or module
● What is an engaging problem that
they need to solve?
● Provide the problem and parameters
at beginning of unit. Student work
informs them of the content.
● Identify content and activities to
acquire needed knowledge.
● Hands-on challenges to put the
content into practice.
● Scaffolding and differentiation as
needed.
● Encourage thinking differently:
brainstorm multiple ideas first

12. Biomolecule module

13. Design a Food Project

14. Design a Food Project

15. Cladogram Project

16. Ecological Issues/Tombstone project

17. Scientific Method

18. Greenspace Redesign

19. Greenspace Redesign

20. Biome “Amazing Race” Survival

21. Cell Model
Choose items to
represent cell
parts by matching
the structure or
the function of the
cell parts with the
materials that you
choose. Defend
your choice.

22. Mission to Mars

23. Mission to Mars

24. Bioengineering Design Challenge
What are
the structural
and functional
barriers to
duplicate
a cell?

25. DNA Replication Project

26. Zebrafish Adoption
Take care of
a developing
zebrafish and
learn about
its structures
and importance
to science

27. @TeachersFirst
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