Investigate!

Once teams have immersed in scientific activities, identified a question, and developed a plan for investigating their questions, they are ready to investigate!

Investigations should incorporate information from a number of different sources - from conducting Internet searches, to interviewing community members, to visiting local science institutions. What those sources will be depends entirely on the strengths, abilities, and interests of team members, local resources near the CTC, and the nature of the team's investigation.

The key to investigating questions is making sense of the research that team members gather. Team members connect various pieces of information to determine the answer to their passionate research question. The guides for note-taking strategies will be helpful for team members to identify and understand connections in their research information.

This section provides helpful resources that coaches may utilize to guide their teams through investigations. These resources include:

• Ideas for note-taking strategies
• Brainstorming activities for teams (to generate new ideas and make connections between existing ideas)
• Ideas for science experiments and links to online resources (Online Resources)
• List of scientists who will answer your questions via email

In addition, the How To Do It guide provides a general timeline for the investigation phase, common questions and answers, and sample questions for team members.