When you read the word "inquire" what do you think of? Perhaps you think of questions, brainstorming, or problem solving. Any of the prior are correct! In the world of education inquiry based instruction certainly does not fit "inside a box." It actually happens to be more of a sliding scale as you can see in the photo on the right. To sum it up, inquiry based instruction uses a student's curiosity to answer scientific based questions while increasing problem solving skills and maintaining rigor. This past week at the 90th annual National FFA Convention I attended a workshop that was about "Inquiry" that was put on by DuPont for pre-service teachers. I thoroughly enjoyed the content that was presented in the workshop and am excited to explore more about inquiry this week in my methods course. This also went along nicely with the readings that I did for this weekly reflection.
It has become quite clear that inquiry lessons can increase motivation and interest in the classroom. I was able to participate in a few activities during my workshop that I attended. As I mentioned the green photo is a scale to compare a lesson to in order to see how much inquiry it includes. When reading a scale such as this one, it is easy to mistakenly believe that a lesson is better if each "feature" fits into the "D" category meaning that it is extremely student-centered. It is crucial to recognize that you are not doing your job if a lesson is entirely student controlled on this scale! There must be variation across the features in order to reach the full potential of the lesson/activity. I plan to check my lessons against the scale to see how they line up. The instructors of the workshop made it clear that implementing inquiry into our instruction is not difficult. When checking some lessons that we had already designed, we would be surprised to find that some inquiry is already included! It simply takes some thought and checking on the chart to see where we stand. Include that inquiry, its easy!
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References:
Warner, A.J. & Myers, B.E. (2011) What inquiry-based instruction? Retrieved from https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/WC/WC07500.pdf
Warner, A.J. & Myers, B.E. (2014). Implementing inquiry-based teaching methods.Retrieved from https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/WC/WC07600.pdf
Alberta Learning. (2004) Focus on inquiry: a teacher’s guide to implementing inquiry-based learning.Retrieved from https://education.alberta.ca/media/313361/focusoninquiry.pdf
Thoron, A.C., Myers, B.E., & Abrams, K. (2011). Inquiry-based instruction: How is it utilized accepted, and assessed in schools with national agriscience teacher ambassadors? Journal of Agriculture Education, 52(1), 96-106. DOI: 10.5032/jae.2011.01096
Angie, thanks for sharing about the workshop you attended and the inquiry scale resource! What do you think will be most difficult about implementing IQB in your classroom? Which class do you see yourself using it the most in?
ReplyDeleteAngie - I enjoyed reading your reflections on Inquiry Based instruction. It made me wish that I could have attended the pre-service teacher workshop. Did you find a lot of overlap with information you learned in the workshop?
ReplyDeleteAngie, having also attended the pre-service teaching workshop, I also got several of those ideas as well. My biggest help I found was more actually seeing a teacher ask the questions and have students ask the questions at Greenwood. How do you plan on using what you've learned in the classroom?
ReplyDeleteAngie, I'm glad you were able to attend the workshop too! I thought it was a beneficial experience. I'm really looking forward to talking with Krista and Mark on Friday. What is one lesson that you are teaching in the spring that you would like to add some IBI to?
ReplyDeleteAngie, I think that our workshop at the National FFA Convention was a great help in building a strong foundation for our knowledge in inquiry to grow. I really appreciate the rubrics that we were given so that we can see and change our lessons to be more student-centered. However, I really like how we DO NOT have to be in column D all the time because that would unrealistic and not fair to our students.
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