Steps for Scientific Inquiry

Steps for Scientific Inquiry

1. Make an OBSERVATION.

2. Create a QUESTION about what you observed. (What do you want to find out?)

3. State your HYPOTHESIS (an educated guess predicting the outcome of the question).

4. Test your hypothesis by doing an EXPERIMENT or INVESTIGATION.

5. Plan your PROCEDURE

¨ What materials will you need?

¨ Step-by-step description of the experiment

6. ANALYZE the results.

· Look at the data you collected.

· Organize it in a chart, table, or graph

· Discuss your findings with other scientists.

7. Do more EXPERIMENTS/INVESTIGATIONS if needed.

8. Make CONCLUSIONS (What did you learn from your scientific investigation?)

9. COMMUNICATE the results in writing.

If you the results of your experiment to not support your hypothesis, change your hypothesis and repeat the process.