A personal study of science process skills in a general physics classroom

This capstone is a study of a three week curriculum unit on science process skills in a General Physics classroom at a large urban high school during the Fall of 2005. Lessons and activities were culled from various sources to create a comprehensive unit on science process skills. Scientists use science process skills to conduct experiments. Common science process skills are observing, inferring, predicting, classifying, measuring, and communicating (Rezba, 1995). Students were pre- and post- assessed using a nationally recognized test for assessing science process skills, the Test of Integrated Process Skills (Shive, 2002). On average students\u27 scores increased by 3% from the pretest to the posttest. On the pretest less than 50% of students could correctly control and independent variables. After three weeks of lessons, students\u27 posttest scores in these areas increased by 20%