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Students conduct an experiment to determine the ability of rocks to absorb and retain water, making connections with the concepts of porosity and permeability in rocks.

One way to peak the interest of your students is to conduct an experiment using objects of things that they encounter often or even on a daily basis.

An investigation in which students conduct three mini-experiments to discover how water passes through a plant's roots, stems, and exits through a plant's leaves.

Learning science and math is normally thought of as committing to memory facts and procedures. Because of this we tend to perceive the best way to teach is through rote memorization of ideas, theories, and models. As a consequence, students experience little opportunity to develop a real understanding of what they are expected learn. Our challenge is to craft strategies which allow student interactivity within lessons. Student involvement beyond memorization is an essential building block for learning science and math.

Sample discrepant events are used to cause contradictions in students' prior knowledge and experiences in support of their better understanding of science concepts.

The importance of experimental design in science is that helps students infer about causes or relationships, as opposed to simply describe what happened in a canned experiment. As students learn to develop their own experimental design they must be able to answer the most important question of all regarding the design process.

As former elementary science and math education professor, I was always encouraging preservice teachers to teach science and math from a hands-on, minds-on perspective. My goal was single minded in the sense that for students to learn science and math their curiosity must peaked. This was always a challenge because most of these preservice teachers learned science and math by rote memorization of facts. Their prior knowledge and experience had few opportunities to actually investigate science phenomena and truly understand the usefulness of math.

Sample discrepant events are used to cause contradictions in students' prior knowledge and experiences in support of their better understanding of science concepts.

Students' interest in learning science is sometimes based on inquiry into facts that others do not know or learning facts they have no prior knowledge or experiences.

Although it is not obvious to the casual observer, rocks absorb water. You can ask your students to observe rocks all day long and they will not be able to tell if the rocks they are observing are absorbing water. However, there is an investigation which allows students to discover that rocks absorb water and how much water specific rocks absorb.

College professor discusses the seven C's of Creative Inquiry in the classroom, including: context, challenge, collect, connect, conclude, critique, communicate.