incorporating inquiry-based learning into your classroom can seem like many things:
expensive
Alright everyone now that we're done playing with liquid nitrogen
we're gonna build a vacuum cannon!
Too open-ended:
I made a ball of tape!
Intimidating:
Can a black hole exist without an event horizon?
Or perhaps even simply time-consuming:
I'm sorry we don't have time to go over that right now.
He's actually a famous St.Bernard named Barry and Barry has been found to have rescued about 70 people
Inquiry-based learning doesn't have to be any of these things
in fact inquiry-based learning is a very good thing
research has shown that it has positive effects on learning leading to increased
motivation and deeper understanding
And students love it
But if a teacher has never done inquiry-based learning before,
or is something that is only occasionally performed in the classroom
what steps can be taken
to fully integrate inquiry into classes' normal routine
Let's see how Andrea does it:
Andrea here is an elementary school teacher
this week Andrea is going to teach
her grade 2 class about simple machines
We are going to talk about the simple machine
Andrea's background however is not in science and she isn't an expert in simple machines
Before she can teach your classabout simple machines she herself has to become familiar with the topic
The best place for Andrea to start is by looking at the curriculum
This will help her learn exactly what the students need to learn
and perhaps more importantly what is not part of the Grade 2 curriculum
As a teacher Andrea has limited time and so doing this will help her filter out what is extraneous
Now that Andrea knows what her Grade 2 class needs to learn about simple machines
where can she go to learn to brush up on the content?
Textbooks are of course good for this but in this day and age some simple
online searches can get you some good results fast
Trusted youtube channels, museum websites and yes even wikipedia can all be useful
Andrea has to be careful though some sites like Wikipedia can often bogged
down topics with very high level content that might not be relevant to the
situation at hand
Andrea shouldn't forget about work colleagues
and PD day contacts she's made as good sources of info
Hi Andrea! Hi Melanie, I was wondering if you had some materials I could use for activity today?
For sure I have lots of things for you.
Once Andrea feels like she's got a good grasp of the content to teach she now has to find
some sort of inquiry activity for her class again lots of activities and
things to build can be found online as well as through colleagues soon what and
refines online will spark your imagination and give her ideas of how to
link the content to society and the environment which is a big component of
the curricula
whatever she ends up finding though Andrew might have to make her own
activity modifications to fit her classes specific needs as and
researching there are few things that she can keep in mind to help you find an
activity that is appropriate for one in order to save time it's a good idea for
her to search for something that students can assemble rather than for
Andrea to have to assemble everything herself
also because teachers typically don't have big budgets one thing and you can
do is to find activities that don't require many materials and that can be
reused from supplies Andrea already has are available at school or through her
school border that you can buy at a dollar store with inquiry something
Andrew will be doing is spending her class into smaller groups of no more
than six Andrew will have to take that into consideration when getting her
supply also andrea should make sure to design an activity that she's
comfortable doing in class safety should be a priority in the next segment Andrew
will introduce a series of activities that will push her student stores open
inquiry