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“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.

Model-based inquiry, inquiry-based learning, and phenomenon are all popular terms in K–12 science education right now. Science education in our public education system is rapidly changing due to the implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). These standards ask teachers to move away from direct instruction to having students develop their understanding of the natural world through guided-learning activities. Under NGSS, students are expected to develop this understanding through one of the main scientific practices, model building, which requires a complex, real-world phenomenon to drive the learning experience. Phenomena work best in the classroom when they apply to students' lives and pique their interest. Finding such phenomena can be hard – especially finding ones that have not already been thoroughly explained on the internet. A great way to find a complex, real-world phenomenon that will interest students is to partner with a local research lab to bring part of their research project into the classroom. This article lays out a process for bringing a local research project into the classroom and designing NGSS-aligned curricula around this project to create a more authentic learning experience for high school students.