Are You Smarter Than a Fourth Grader?

One of the most frustrating things, I think, about scientific inquiry is that sometimes you may not ever have a definitive answer to a question. Further more, answers you find may only lead to more questions. 

That's the thing though; scientific inquiry is learning, and learning, well, just isn't clean cut. It's messy, and jumbled, and many times discombobulating. 

I think that as both learners and teachers, we need to become comfortable with the feeling of not knowing. At the heart of learning, it's okay to not know something, be wrong, and make mistakes. It is said that people, adults specifically, fear what they don't understand; I think that that fear is derived from a deep-seated intimidation of the uncertainty inherent in the unknown. However, in order to further ourselves as teachers and furthermore, enable our students to become scientific thinkers, we need to learn how to embrace the uncertain and the unknown. We need to learn that it's okay to be wrong, to not know an answer, and to make mistakes along the way. That's where learning happens!

I think this is why our PBL activity where we had to design a transportation device for a marble using only certain items given to us was one of my favorite classes this semester. If the first iteration of your design didn't work, then you were able to go back to the drawing board, discuss, question, redesign, and test again. It was fantastic!
Check out some of the groups' test runs below: