Fiona's Flytraps - Experimental Design Practice - Fill-In Google Slides or print

Fiona is interested in seeing how the bugs she chooses to feed your Venus flytraps affect their growth! This Experimental Design Practice Scenario follows Fiona on her journey through setting up a valid experiment in order to obtain reliable data, and utilizes aesthetic imagery to increase engagement. Let's go!

The product contains:

1. 4-page pdf student activity

2. 10-page pdf teacher guide with answer key and helpful tips

3. Google Slides version of student activity, with text boxes for students to complete the activity digitally

Prints well in COLOR and GREYSCALE!

More About This Product

This practice scenario will support your students as they develop proficiency in experimental design, data organization, and data visualization. Students will analyze an experimental scenario to identify components of experimental design, including independent and dependent variables, constants, trials, writing scientific questions, formulating hypotheses, and data organization. Extension opportunities include data visualization and analysis using experimental data. Experimental Design, Graphing, and Claim-Evidence-Reasoning all in one lesson!

No-Prep Implementation

This activity can be implemented with no advanced preparation on your part! It can be completed in roughly 20 minutes, with built-in extension opportunities that can last an entire class period or beyond.  This activity also works great as an emergency sub plan.

Opportunities for Extension

In the 20-minute version of this activity, students will analyze the experimental prompt and identify experimental components, and create a data table that could be used for data organization.  Extension offers students an actual data set which they can add to their data table, and space to create a graph to visually represent the data.  Further extension through data analysis is also included, where students will have the opportunity to create a claim based upon the data, and use evidence and reasoning to support the claim. 

Teacher Guide

The helpful Teacher Guide at the end of this lesson contains possible answers for each question.  The open-ended nature of many of these questions, however, allows for variation in student responses.  Helpful tips, definitions, and teaching strategies are embedded in the Teacher Guide. 

From Deficiency to Proficiency

The Middle School NGSS builds upon K-5 NGSS, which include the fundamentals of Scientific Inquiry and Experimental Design.  By the time students enter Middle School, they should come into your classroom with proficiency in these fundamental skills.  This, however, is not often the case.  Many of our students come from classrooms that do not offer sufficient opportunities to develop proficiency in the K-5 NGSS standards.  This proves problematic for Middle School science teachers when tasked with bringing Middle School students from deficiency to proficiency within standards requiring prior knowledge in scientific thinking and inquiry.  

Cross-Curricular Connections

In addition to science standards, this activity engages learners in relevant math and ELA standards as well! Students will calculate mean and range using multi-trial data, and build a graph to visualize the data. Following visualization, students will develop a claim based upon the data, and utilize evidence and reasoning to support their claim.