SWH approach to science

This year we are studying science in the SWH approach. Science Writing Heuristic is an inquiry based science method, where students will learn about different areas of science through inquiry.
WHY? Teaching science has always been exciting to me, but I found trying to get through all the Standards and Benchmarks in a school year was very difficult. We have been teaching science in a spiral format where students would learn a little bit each year on the same topics. This never gave us a chance to get very deep, because we had to cover every area each year. This usually meant we did very little hands on, or if we did do experiments they were teacher directed. I would stand up front and tell them what was going to happen and why. Students would watch and say okay. Then they would spit back the information they memorized for a test and forget it.
SWH is not this way. In the SWH format, students create questions about a topic, and I will find different activities to help answer the question. We create Concept Maps, questions, and then make Claims and Evidence. When doing the experiments they are given the supplies, but not step by step directions. They work in small groups to discover ideas that might not all be the same, but they will have to prove what they come up with. The neat thing is they find out more this way then if I gave them what they were to discover. Students are directing their learning and really finding out why things happen, instead of being told why it happens.
After working with their supplies, they have to come up with a Claim of what happened. Then they add the evidence to prove their claim. Each group will present what they came up with and the class then asks questions if they feel they did not prove their claim. If their claims are not proven we use the experts to find out what is happening. We have several books about our topic and computers to find answers to back up what we discovered. When we are done we discuss the results and do some quick writes to explain the experiment.
We started the year with a difficult concept of Light. Our Big Idea is light is a form of energy. We have completed several experiments helping us learn about light. We will be posting in our Blog each experiment we do and what we discovered.

Stay Tuned.