Abstract
Contemporary view of a scientifically literate person requires their ability to apply appropriate methods and processes during solving problem tasks of experimental character. Development of these students' abilities is, however, still marginalized by the lack of educational experiments at plenty of schools.
One of the main reasons is usually a lack of methodological support, thereby teachers' confidence in conducting experiments or planning lab tasks for students. In this paper, an inquiry-based problem task focused on temperature changes at everyday activities.
A USB thermometer was suggested as a tool as it enables recording temperature and instant graph depiction on a screen of a computer. This step enables further development of students' logical thinking and interconnection of their knowledge.
The problem task was verified in a pilot study in three elementary school classes. The results confirm that it is not efficient to introduce open inquiry tasks for students in seventh and eighth grades.
The results also show that students in the ninth and partly eighth grade are capable of solving the task, although teachers' thorough instruction is needed.