To introduce a new subject like sound, the teacher should address the student’s
curiosity with questions involving both known, or seemingly known, concepts and unexpected holes in their understanding. This approach is therefore a form of the inquiry-based method of ‘teaching by questioning’.
The main problem here for most teachers is the delicate balance between not saying too much and not answering too soon while at the same time keeping track of time and not letting the students go astray into unrealistic and unprofitable directions. Having said that, it should be emphasized that not every scientifically unacceptable scenario or solution is necessarily unprofitable. A proposed explanation may at the one hand be incorrect but may at the other hand contain nice elements of scientific thinking and motivation to solve the problem.
Being introductory at an elementary level, the main IBSE approaches employed here are reflective discourse, interactive demonstration, guided discovery and guided inquiry. Through the activities in this subunit students develop basic abilities to do and understand scientific inquiry.
- Ask and answer questions.
- Plan and conduct simple investigations.
- Employ tools to gather data.
- Use data to construct reasonable explanations.
- Communicate investigations and explanations.
- Understand that scientists use different kinds of investigations and tools to develop explanations using evidence and knowledge.
Some activities are ICT activities in which a computer with sound sensor is used to record sound waveforms.