Activities for Science Process Skills

Inquiry-based Learning

Students need hands-on practice to effectively learn and master science process skills. Classroom activities using science content provide opportunities to develop these skills and encourage students to learn to think like scientists. Science activities using process skills allow students to manipulate objects and events to investigate scientific phenomena, analyze data and present their findings.

Scientific inquiries begin with students using their senses to observe an object or event. Classifying is a type of observation where students sort objects according to their properties. This allows students to make a prediction as to what they expect will happen based on their observations. Investigating properties of matter requires observing, classifying and predicting skills. Students observe properties such as size, weight and buoyancy and classify objects based on the properties. Students can learn about buoyancy by predicting which objects they think will float or sink.

With guidance, students can design their own experiments. This process skill is integrated with hypothesizing, controlling variables and collecting data. Students can hypothesize about a factor that affects plant growth, such as sunlight, water or soil type. Then students can identify which variable they want to test and control all other variables. To conduct the experiment, students observe changes, if any, and carefully record their data. As an alternative, students could perform a similar activity for mold growth or conduct a thermal energy activity to find out which materials are good insulators.

Students can analyze and share their results by interpreting data, inferring and communicating. Recording data in a chart and making a graph helps students to look for patterns in the data and draw conclusions about what the data mean. For example, students can investigate chemical weathering by placing pieces of limestone in water and vinegar and charting the change in mass of each piece over time. Students use the chart to interpret the data and conclude that vinegar weathers more of the limestone than water. Then students can use this conclusion to infer that acid rain causes chemical weathering of limestone. Students can communicate their findings by making a line graph and writing a summary or lab report.