Demonstrating the Role of Osmosis in Diabetes Using Growing Spheres

“Hands-on inquiry” has become a buzzword in science education but does not have an exact definition for most practitioners. This leads to many different ideas of what inquiry should look like in the classroom, and researchers have discovered that just doing hands-on activities does not lead to deeper understanding. This is why it is important to incorporate the scientific practices of the Next Generation Science Standards into activities in the classroom, particularly designing an investigation and analyzing data. A new twist on a classic high school biology lab demonstrates how students can design and analyze their scientific investigation to draw conclusions and apply their new understanding to the human body. This activity also demonstrates how teachers can incorporate instructional material into an inquiry activity, since time constraints are a particular concern in the high school classroom.