I learned that Inquiry is a student-centered process for
learning in which the teacher acts more as a facilitator or guide.
I learned the importance of establishing a sense of
community in an Inquiry based classroom.
I need to develop a community where students feel their ideas are valued
and where they feel inspired to take safe learning risks.
I learned about the Abilities Necessary to Do Inquiry, which
are the abilities that students need to have developed, or need to be working
to develop, in order to learn from Inquiry.
These abilities include: Identifying questions that can be answered
through investigations, Designing and conducting an investigation, Using
appropriate tools and techniques to gather, analyze, and interpret data, Developing
descriptions, explanations, predictions, and models using evidence, Thinking
critically and logically to make relationships between evidence and
explanations, Recognizing and analyzing alternative explanations and
predictions, and Communicating procedures and explanations.
I also learned the Understandings About Inquiry. After learning what Inquiry really is, these
Understandings seemed sort of like, “Well of course these are the understanding
about inquiry.” They were not as much of a surprise or an “Aha!”
The Understandings about Inquiry are:
- Different kinds of questions suggest different kinds of investigations.
- Current knowledge and understanding guide investigations.
- Technology used to gather data enhances accuracy and allows us to analyze and quantify results of investigations.
- Explanations emphasize evidence, have logically consistent arguments, and use principles, models, and theories.
- New knowledge advances through legitimate skepticism.
- Investigations sometimes result in new ideas and phenomena for study, generate new methods or procedures for an investigation, or develop new technologies.
I think that it is this last Understanding that scared me
the most about Inquiry. I want my students
to be curious and I want them to be interested in whatever we are learning, but
like most teachers, while I want my students to have new ideas that lead to new
investigations, I am mandated to teach a curriculum and skill set. I worry that the new ideas and phenomena
generated for study will take on a life of their own, and that we will get off
track. While I know my students will
learn even if they are following a different set of rails, I still have a
responsibility to teach the curriculum and grade level standards.
In addition to the abilities and understanding associated with
Inquiry, I also learned that the process skills for Inquiry based learning are observing,
questioning, planning and investigating, formulating explanations, making
predictions, analyzing data, and communicating.
These process skills are skills that business leaders and higher
education have determined most important for student success after high
school. These process skills connect
with the 5 Essential Features of Classroom Inquiry:
- The learner engages in questions that can be investigated.
- The learner gives priority to evidence in responding to questions.
- The learner formulates explanations from evidence.
- The learner connects explanations to knowledge.
- The learner communicates and justifies explanations.
While all of these features do not need to be present in
every lesson, if not one of them is addressed, then the lesson would not be
inquiry based.
This class also challenged my understanding about facts and
concepts. I had no idea that I would
have such a difficult time sorting through a list of concepts and facts. One realization is that with knowledge and
practical experience, some concepts seem to evolve into facts. What was a concept for a first grader is now
just a fact for the 10th grader. For myself, I focused on facts
being concrete pieces of information, and concepts being big and more abstract
ideas. A very practical experience in
this course on Inquiry involved determining investigable and non-investigable
questions, and also learning how to change a non-investigable question to an investigable
question. This was vey helpful to me as
I work to improve my questioning strategies so that I can encourage my students
to have a deeper engagement in their learning.
One of the most helpful aspects of this class was the lesson
ideas and Web 2.0 tools shared by my classmates. It is helpful to hear new ways to use the old
familiar tools, and also exciting to have some new tools that have already been
test-driven to try in my own classroom.
In addition to exploring how Web 2.0 tools can be integrated
into an inquiry classroom, I learned about the 5E Inquiry Instructional
Planning Model. I have been using
backward design for planning, and the 5E’s (Engage, Explore, Explain,
Elaborate, and Evaluate) model was easy to incorporate into my existing
plan. Just as in backward design, the
evaluation part of the 5Es is ongoing.
While I prefer a linear format, the purpose of the 5E continuous flow
graphic was to help us see the cyclic nature of the inquiry process, and to
remind us of our responsibility to continually formatively assess throughout a
learning unit. If formative assessment
is ongoing, there are few surprises on a summative assessment, because teachers
will have already responded to the misconceptions and misunderstandings.
Before this course I believed that Inquiry looked more like
the student centered/open inquiry end of the Inquiry continuum, and I was not
sure how I could implement something that I imagined to be so freewheeling with
my students who have such significant emotional and behavioral
disabilities. I was relieved to learn
that Inquiry IS on a continuum, and that while my lessons may need to fall
somewhere between teacher centered/structured inquiry and guided inquiry most
of the time, I can still use inquiry in my classroom. Using the 5E Instructional Model and
attending to the essential features of Inquiry, I believe that I can design
inquiry based lessons that help my students to develop those process skills
that are integral to their future success.
And since I believe in diving in, tomorrow I will be starting the unit on particle movement in matter that I developed during this course. Hopefully it will be a positive learning experience for my students, and also for me!