At Kūlia, we implement a wonderful program called Foundational Approaches in Science Teaching developed by UH-Manoa.
In our science class, students conduct inquiry laboratory and field investigations 80% of the time.
STUDENTS AS RESEARCHERS
Class organization is in research teams in which students develop their own hypotheses, experimental designs, and explanations.
The teacher’s role is research director. Explanation must be supported by evidence.
Our students develop their scientific skills by doing science—designing and carrying out their own experiments, collecting and analyzing data, and drawing conclusions based on evidence.
DESIGNING EXPERIMENTS
Careful attention is paid to valid experimental design including the use of controls, replication of experimental results, and setting of proper standards. Scientists and how they work are studied in the disciplines of astronomy, chemistry, physics, geophysics and organic chemistry. Students conduct actual investigations as physical scientists, ecologists, and technologists.
Students respond to differences in data collected by looking for patterns and relationships, setting standards, examining the effects of human and instrument error, graphing data and looking for generalizations.
DEVELOPING LABORATORY SKILLS
Emphasis is placed on developing laboratory skills of measuring distance, mass, area, volume, temperature, time, rainfall, humidity, vapor pressure, transpiration, energy transfer, rates of change, heat, work, force, specific heat, solar constant, movement of the sun, moon, planets, and constellations, and so on.
Students develop all of their basic laboratory measurement skills in our science classes. Students assemble and disassemble laboratory equipment used in their investigations. They invent and calibrate a wide variety of instruments needed in their investigations.
BUILDING INSTRUMENTS
Students construct and calibrate their own instruments for field mapping, measuring the solar constant, weather measurement, air pollution studies, water quality studies, and astronomy. Design projects such as submarines, moving fluids project give students opportunities to solve practical problems through technology.
GRAPHING
Graphing is used extensively as a tool to search for patterns and relationships.
Students use graphs to find averages and compare with calculated means of densities of substances. Angle measurements are employed in the study of light, azimuth and altitude calculations using astrolabes and sunscopes, and the formation and erosion of landforms. Students use a variety of formulae in calculating density, energy, work, mechanical equivalent of heat, calories in food, the specific heat of metals and liquids, universal laws of gravitation, and energy flow through ecosystems.
PRESENTING AND CRITIQING
Communication through oral and written scientific reports and student seminars and debates form a central focus in FAST.
RELATE TO REAL WORLD AND EXPLORE APPLICATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
The Relational Study strand in the FAST courses is designed to help students understand the relationships between science, technology, and society. Specific projects such as the submarine project, the weather balloon project, and the moving fluids project require students to apply the science they have been learning to technological designs.
Order and organization are exemplified in investigating cause-and-effect relationships, atomic and kinetic molecular theories, cosmological theories to explain the origin and organization of the universe, trophic relationships among organisms in the environment, and exchanges of matter and energy.