Students need to talk with peers and their teacher in order to articulate what they have experienced during these explo rations. Talking helps students work through their prelimi nary thoughts about a concept. Some structure and guidelines can help students find a forum to discuss and clarify their thinking. You might ask students to form small groups in order to work on problems and discuss major concepts, for example, those which relate to the lab experiment. Learning to Write a Research Paper A practical writing exercise for science majors in advanced courses is to write up an experiment as though they were submitting it to a professional journal.
Students do the lab work in the usual way, up to the data collection.
However, instead of writing a standard lab report or summary in their lab notebook, they are required to identify an appropriate journal and follow its rules for submission. Presentation of experimental data, figures, conclusions, and references must conform to the submission guidelines. You can use this reporting method to help students improve their writing and presentation skills as well as to think more deeply about one or more of their experiments. Proposing Explanations Having interested your students in describing and exploring some phenomena, you might provide opportunities for them to attempt explanations and synthesis. As teachers, we know that one of the best ways to learn something is to explain it to someone else.