Inquiry Lab Reflection

I chose to critique a lab assignment titled "Relative Age of Dating of Geologic Cross Sections." This is an activity that I would like to modify to do with my students during our Geological Processes. The lab tells the students to:

Locate the core samples on display in the classroom. These samples were taken 25 feet apart from one another on your schoolyard. Using your geologic knowledge determine what is happening between each sample and raw in you best guess to complete the cross section.

The students compare the key with the colors and patterns of many rocks such as sandstone, limestone, shale, quartzite, igneous intrusion A, etc. with the cores on the board. The three cores need to be connected to get the "big picture" of what happened first. Then the students have to draw it on their lab paper and order the events from oldest event to youngest event. There is also an extension activity to identify where fossils would be found in the cross section.

I like this lab idea because it presents a real-world problem of dating rock layers, but also brings in prior knowledge of rock types (i.e., fossils would be found in sedimentary rocks, but not igneous rocks; rocks are deposited in layers, oldest at the bottom)

I believe that this lab activity is a Level 1 on Herron's Continuum of Scientific Inquiry because the lab proposes problems (what happened first?) and the students are discovering relationships they didn't know  from manuals or texts. If this activity is done at the beginning of the unit it could potentially be considered Level 2 because problems are provided but students need to figure out the solution. There could be more than one creative way to "solve" the cross-section puzzle.

According to the Inquiry Analysis Tool, this lab activity has room to improve on the following questions:

• There are no guided questions to engage students. 
• Students do not have the opportunity to generate questions.
• Students are not asked to explain their reasoning - there are no questions. 
• Students do not compare explanations.
• Studnets do not revise thier explanations in light of evidence. 

Things I would improve:

• Warm-up discovery activity such as a cup of fossils to get students engaged, "Some scientists called paleontologists discover unknown fossils as their job. What are some questions that you could come up with if you were a paleontologist who just discovered these fossil(s)?" 
• I would title this lab "What happened first?" to present a question to focus the students on a bigger picture. Where in your life do you organize things according to age/time? (e.g., family tree, judicial system, getting a raise (more experienced people get paid more))
• I would include more information about fossils from the basics - 
• What is a fossil? 
• Which items would be produce fossils? (Bones, tissues, teeth, etc.) 
• I would simplify the cross section to be able to do this lab activity early on in the unit to encourage student-directed questioning. With the population that I currently teach, I would need to revise this lab to become more explicit - not necessarily taking away the inquiry, but putting the information in an organized fashion so that the expectations are clear.
• I would provide an additional extension that could be done would be to have students create a cross section and cut it up into pieces to have other students find the missing cores. 
• I would include questions in the laboratory to encourage student writing, thinking, relating to prior knowledge and real-world scenarios. 
• Where else in your life do you organize or order things according to age (chronological)? 
• What kinds of events could disrupt or change that chronological order? 
• What kind of geologic events could disrupt or change rock layers?