CIBL Exercise Catalogue

The Center for Inquiry-Based Learning has created a diverse set of science and math exercises that use
discovery
observation
measurement
model-building
design techniques
hands-on activities
collaborative group learning

These are techniques used by scientists themselves in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. Our exercises help boost students' self confidence, collegiality, and motivation to learn. In addition, many of these exercises are multidisciplinary, including elements from
science
fine arts
economics
mathematics
social studies
language arts

Download: Follow this link to download the curriculum grid as a Microsoft Word file: Curriculum Grid, Word.
Follow this link to see a version in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format: Curriculum Grid, PDF.
(You may download Adobe Acrobat Reader for free by following this link.)

Animal Diversity

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: Biology

Each student researches a particular group of organisms, creates a three-dimensional model that stresses some interesting aspect of that group, and then makes an oral presentation to the rest of the class.

An Apple a Day

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: Art, Biology

Students are presented with an apple and are asked to draw it. In each subsequent class period they are asked to draw the same apple again. In this way, they watch and record the changes the apple goes through as it decays. This exercise can serve as an introduction or complement to the exercise Dirty Decomposers.

Before and After

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: Art, Biology, Earth Science, Engineering/Technology, History/Social Studies, Language Arts, Physical Sciences

Students are asked to identify something, A, that changes into something else, B. They are asked to make a model of B (preferably three-dimensional), and make a presentation including information about the causes and mechanisms of this change. This can be in a biological context, an art context, or a technological context. Origami is used as an illustrative analog of morphogenesis ("form creation").

Bridges

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: Engineering, Physics

Each student builds the lightest-weight bridge he or she can that spans a 24-inch space between two supports. The bridge must be made from simple materials and must be able to support a standard brick (about five pounds). In the process, students formulate the basic engineering principles of bridge design.

Clay Boats

Grade range: 5-12
Subject area: Physical Sciences

Each student uses a small quantity of modeling clay to make a boat that will float in a tub of water. The object is to build a boat that will hold as much weight as possible without sinking. In the process of designing and testing their boats, students discover some of the basic principles of boat design and gain first-hand experience with concepts such as buoyancy and density.

This exercise can stand alone as a process skill activity, or it can be used as an introduction to the topics of density and/or buoyancy, which are addressed in the exercises Floaters and Sinkers and What Floats Your Boat? We recommend that the exercise Paper Towers be done prior to this one, since the concept of center of gravity may be helpful to students when they analyze their successful and unsuccessful boat designs.

Dirty Decomposers

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: Biology, Earth Sciences

Students will design and conduct experiments to determine what environmental factors favor decomposition by soil microbes. They will use chunks of carrot for the materials to be decomposed, and their experiments will be carried out in plastic bags filled with dirt. Every few days the students will remove the carrots from the dirt and weigh them. Depending on the experimental conditions, after a few weeks most of the carrots will have decomposed completely.

Factors Affecting Friction

Grade range: 7-12
Subject areas: Physical Sciences

This is an exercise about friction that is meant to follow the exercise Sliding and Stuttering. Using the same experimental apparatus of the previous exercise, students design and conduct experiments to answer two questions, "Does the weight of an object affect the amount of friction between it and surface it slides upon, and if so, how?" and "Does the amount of surface in contact affect the amount of friction between an object and the surface it slides upon, and if so, how?"

Feedback and Flowcharts

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: Physical Sciences, Biology

Using examples from nature or technology, students identify the elements of a feedback system, and then they create a flowchart to model the feedback system.

Find Your Peanut

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: Art, Biology, Language Arts

Each student is given a peanut and is asked to study it carefully. All the peanuts are then placed in a bag and mixed up. Students are then asked to find their own peanuts.

Floaters and Sinkers

Grade range: 5-12
Subject area: Physical Sciences

Students will gain an intuitive understanding of density by comparing objects of equal volumes but which have different masses. They will then use two different methods to determine the densities of a variety of materials and objects. The first method involves direct measurement of the volume of objects that have simple shapes, while the second uses the water displacement method to determine the volumes of irregularly-shaped objects. This exercise is intended to follow the exercise Clay Boats.

Hot Cans and Cold Cans

Grade range: 6-12
Subject areas: Physical Sciences, with connections to Biology

Students will investigate and apply the simple physics of heating and cooling to a controlled situation requiring that they keep one mass of water warm, and cool another, equal mass of water, using only common everyday materials.

Hot Friction

Grade range: 7-12
Subject areas: Physical Sciences

Students use small electronic devices known as thermistors to measure the temperature beneath an object such as a coffee cup as it slides across a surface. By choosing different surfaces, students can compare in a quantitative manner the amounts of friction that are encountered. Although the electronic devices are very easy to use and can be used over and over again, the materials needed to do this exercise cost about $150-225, depending on class size. It is best for students to have done the exercises Sliding and Stuttering and Factors Affecting Friction before doing this one.

How Many Drops?

Grade range: 7-12
Subject areas: Biology, Chemistry

Students will conduct a simple test to determine how many drops of each of three liquids can be placed on a penny before spilling over. The three liquids are water, rubbing alcohol, and vegetable oil; because of their different surface tensions, more water can be piled on top of a penny than either of the other two liquids. However, this is not the main point of the activity. Instead, students are asked to come up with an explanation for their observations about the different amounts of liquids a penny can hold. In other words, they are asked to make hypotheses that explain their observations, and because middle school students are not likely to have prior knowledge of the property of surface tension, their hypotheses are not likely to include this idea. Then they are asked to come up with ways to test their hypotheses, although they do not need to actually test their hypotheses. The important point of this activity is that the tests they devise must fit with the hypotheses they have articulated, or conversely, the hypotheses they come up with must be testable in order to be useful.

How Much Sugar Is in Bubble Gum?

Grade range: 6-12
Subject areas: Physical Sciences

Most of the flavoring in gum is due to the sugar or other sweetener it contains. As gum is chewed, the sugar dissolves and is swallowed. After a piece of gum loses its flavor, it can be left to dry at room temperature and then the difference between its initial (unchewed) mass and its chewed mass can be used to calculate the percentage of sugar in the gum. This demonstration experiment is used to generate new questions about gums and their ingredients, and students can then design and execute new experiments based on their own questions.

Mark-Recapture Sampling

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: Biology, Mathematics (Statistics)

This exercise is a simulation of a classic technique used for estimating the size of animal populations. Using small objects such as beads or dried beans, students will randomly select and then mark a sample population. After these marked individuals are mixed back in with the rest of the objects, students again sample the population, making note of the number of marked objects "caught" a second time. The concepts of ratio and proportion are then used to estimate the total number of objects.

Measurement and Variation

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: Biology, Mathematics (Statistics)

In these exercises, students will make careful observations in order to make individual identifications and also to explore the range of variation in a particular biological structure (peanuts). When trying to measure variation, scientists are often confronted with special problems. When they make their measurements, variations may arise that are caused by the measuring tools. Or sometimes variations arise due to the foibles of the measurers! Students will explore these problems as well.

The Mystery Box

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: unlimited

Teams of three or four students are given a wooden box that is sealed shut. Inside the box are some familiar objects. Their goal is to make a prediction about what they will see when they open the box. The students make hypotheses, run tests, record results, draw conclusions, and report their prediction to the class before they are finally allowed to open the box.

Paper Towers

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: Mechanical Engineering, Physics--also Biology

Each student makes a tower using two sheets of newsprint and ten inches of transparent tape. The object is to build the tallest tower that will resist being blown over by the teacher from one arm's length away. In the process, students formulate the basic engineering principles of tower design.

Pattern

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: Art, Biology, Mathematics (Geometry), Language Arts

In this series of exercises, students observe and create a large variety of patterns -- two-dimensional, temporal, artistic, natural, and/or technological. The focus is on what each pattern tells us about its origin, growth, function, or demise.

Seed Germination

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: Biology, Mathematics, Language Arts

This is a long-term experiment (8-12 weeks) in which students plant seeds and watch germination and early growth. Students decide for themselves the variable(s) they want to test against an appropriate control. They are provided with certain basic materials, e.g., plastic seedling starter pots, potting soil, and a light table, but are otherwise responsible for designing the experiment, gathering the data, and presenting their results. The experimental process is the important lesson here; the actual results are less important than how they were obtained.

Sliding and Stuttering

Grade range: 7-12
Subject areas: Physical Sciences

Students use a spring scale to drag an object such as a ceramic coffee cup along a table top or the floor. The spring scale allows them to measure the frictional force that exists between the moving cup and the surface it slides on. By modifying the bottom surface of the cup, students can find out what kinds of surfaces generate more or less friction.

Structure and Function

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: Art, Biology

Students choose some biological object, examine its structure, and identify or speculate on one particular function. Next they create a blueprint of the object, focusing on the particular function. Then they create an abstraction of the object, and finally, create a piece of art based on the object.

Tutti Frutti

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: Biology

Students are presented with a wide array of "fruits" to examine and are asked to find the one that is different. The odd one is actually not a fruit, but looks like one. Through exploring the various fruits, students come to understand the difference between homologous and analogous structures.

Virus Tracker

Grade range: 7-12
Subject areas: Biology, Health

Students will simulate the spread of a virus such as HIV through a population by "sharing" (but not drinking) the water in a plastic cup with several classmates. Although invisible, the water in a few of the cups will already be tainted with the "virus" (sodium carbonate). After all the students have shared their liquids, the contents of the cups will be tested for the virus with phenolphthalein, a chemical that causes a striking color change in the presence of sodium carbonate. Students will then set about trying to determine which of their classmates were the ones originally infected with the virus.

What Floats Your Boat?

Grade range: 5-12
Subject area: Physical Sciences

Students use modeling clay, a material that is denser than water and thus ordinarily sinks in water, to discover the principle of buoyancy. This exercise is intended to follow the exercises Clay Boats and Floaters and Sinkers.

What Is It?!

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: Science or just about any subject

Working individually or in groups, students are presented with unusual or at least unfamiliar objects and are asked to speculate on what they are and/or how they are used. The intention is to get students to make careful observations of the various objects, looking especially at the details. They must then present their arguments to substantiate their speculations.

What's Going on Here?

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: Biology or just about any subject

Students are shown photographs, slides, or overhead transparencies of a natural phenomenon. After making careful observations, they are asked to infer how the phenomenon occurred.

Window Gardens

Grade range: 3-12
Subject area: Biology

Students will use a plastic sandwich bag containing a damp paper towel taped to a window as a model system to observe the germination and early growth of radish seeds. Students will then be challenged to pose a question about seed germination and growth that they can answer using the hanging bag system.

Math Games and Exercises

Bagels, Pico, Fermi

Grade range: 4-12
Subject areas: Mathematics

In this number game, students work as a class to figure out a three-digit mystery number. Students use logic and the process of elimination to find the answer. It is a great time filler when there are 10 minutes left in class, and once students learn the rules, they can lead the exercise themselves.

Fill the Number Grid

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: Mathematics

This is a math game to be played by a whole class. The teacher draws a 12 X 12 number grid on the chalkboard, though only two or three entries are actually displayed in the grid. The class as a group must fill the grid according to a predetermined rule that they must discover during the filling process.

New Boxes from Old

Grade range: 7-10
Subject area: Mathematics (Geometry)

Students take a rectangular box (e.g., a cereal box) and cut it up to make a new, cubical box with the same volume as the original. In so doing, they will discover that because the cubical box has less surface area than the original, a cube is a more efficient way to package things. To display their work, students design and construct a mobile, to be hung from a ceiling at school or at home.

What's the Bug?

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: Mathematics

This math game is played by a whole class. Students are presented with arithmetic calculations that contain specific errors (improper carrying, left justification instead of right justification, working a problem from left to right instead of right to left). Their job is to identify the error and then make the same mistake in a new example without giving away the nature of the error to the rest of the class.

What's the Rule?

Grade range: 5-12
Subject areas: Mathematics

This math game is played by a whole class. The teacher turns one number into another using some combination of arithmetic operations. The object is for the students to figure out the rules and then perform those same operations on a new number without giving away the rules themselves.

Download: Follow this link to download the exercise catalogue as a Microsoft Word file: Catalogue, Word.
Follow this link to see a version in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format: Catalogue, PDF.
(You may download Adobe Acrobat Reader for free by following this link.)

Copyright © 2000 by Norman Budnitz and Mary Hebrank. All rights reserved.

Revised: August 31, 2007