Levels of Inquiry Model of Science Teaching: Learning sequences to lesson plans

This article presents a framework for lesson planning using the Levels of Inquiry Model of Science Teaching. The model’s inquiry spectrum consists of discovery learning, interactive demonstrations, inquiry lessons, inquiry labs, and hypothetical inquiry. Each level of this inquiry spectrum is associated with a 5stage learning cycle consisting of observation, manipulation, generalization, verification and application This article provides several examples of learning sequences showing how to plan lessons for each level of inquiry. The article has implications for classroom teachers, teacher educators and researchers who are directly involve in the teaching and learning process dealing with the construction of pedagogical content knowledge in the areas of introductory physics. The Levels of Inquiry Model of Science Teaching (Wenning, 2005, 2010, and 2011) is an approach to instruction that systematically promotes the development of intellectual and scientific process skills by addressing inquiry in a systematic and comprehensive fashion. When taught using the Levels of Inquiry approach, students have the opportunity to make observations, formulate predictions, collect and analyze data, develop scientific principles, synthesize laws, and make and test hypotheses to generate explanations. The leading author’s various articles dealing with Levels of Inquiry provide a framework for inquiryoriented instruction by way of its inquiry spectrum. No longer is inquiry-oriented teaching to be seen as an amalgam of convoluted and disconnected processes. Rather, it is to be treated systematically as a series of hierarchical approaches each with affiliated process skills. Wenning (2005) presented a hierarchy of inquiry