Generating+&+Testing+Hypotheses

=Generating & Testing Hypotheses=

**Problem Solving**
====The purpose of problem solving is to teach students to think about various situations that they are in and come up with the best solution possible to resolve it. This is a skill that is lacking in most of our students. I see it every day in my classroom. My students are so use to someone figuring things out for them, that when I make them try to solve a problem on their own, they don't know where to begin. The major way that I use problem solving in the classroom is when our soical worker comes in once a week to do Second Step with my students. These are lessons that deal with various situations like what to do if you are frustrated, how do you handle when your friends want you to help them do something that you know is wrong, etc. These lessons takes them through the steps to come up with various solutions and pick the best one. It is amazing how they can come up with answers in group, but struggle with applying it to their own situations.====

**Decision Making**
====We are all faced with making many decisions throughout our lives. As adults we hopefully are capable of thinking through all of our choices, by looking at a set of criteria, to arrive at the best decision. Students need to learn how to do this for all aspects of their education and lives. They need to make decisions about the best way to solve a math problem or the best way to complete a science experiement or even the best way to tackel their homework. Just yesterday we discussed how do we decide what makes a good partner for group work. I do have to admit that this is a skill that I could develop more activities around.====

**Experimental Inquiry**
====The purpose of experimental inquiry is to have students develop a hypothesis about something, like what happens to ocean life when their is an oil spill or why the author chose to write a book the way they did, and then test out various reasons or things that could happen that would prove their statement. This mostly occurs in my classroom during science. I would like to do more of this. I would like some better ideas for incorporating this into the areas of ELA, math and social studies.====

Apply And Reflect
== I liked the create a graph. It was really simple and user friendly. I plan touse this for data that I would like to keep. I could see my students using this for science experiments and even keeping track of their own zone changes. I am not sure what the extra green dot is and couldn't get rid of it. This would be great to display on the SMARTboard and porblem solve the issue for the next month. ==