July+17th


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__ ** Due Next Class: ** __ 1. What practical benefits and potential issues do you see in using an inquiry approach to teach science?
 * Post answers to the reflection questions (also found in your syllabus) ** . ** Click on the discussion button (top right) of this page to post your answers. **

2. Describe an activity or method that you've learned about that you could see yourself using in your classroom.


 * Lesson Analysis (please attach a copy of the rubric). **

Kurt Handrich 1. After reading ch. 6 of Best Practices, describe your understanding of what "inquiry" means in science. Inquiry is let students ask their own questions and find their own answers. It changes science from rote learning where teachers impart learning to students to an experience where students become actively engaged in their own learning. Inquiry is a means of teacheing where students are allowed to question, investigate their questions and create their own meaning as they learn for themselves. 2. How does this compare with your experiences of Science class as a student? Most of my science learning was having to do the experiment the right way and get the right answers when I was able to do an experiment. There are not many of my science classes that I remember which I attribute to their not being very engaging. However, I had two wonderful science teachers in high school who allowed us creativity. A friend of mine and I were allowed to do an independent study on holograms where we took a sand table, a laser and a holographic plate and tried to make our own hologram. While we didn’t succeed, it was a wonderful experience where we wrestled with al the factors that might be attributed to our failings. I also remember creating my own experiment where I was testing the affects of garden bug spray on the garden plants themselves. I really feel these teachers were ahead of their time in allowing us freedom to experiment and even fail without the failing being a failure. I believe they are the reason I deeply love science.
 * Journal reflections from 7/15/13 due today. **

Karla Atkinson – Due: 7/17/13 Reflection #1: Doing “inquiry” in science is the process of having students develop questions about the topic they are learning about and pursuing answers to these questions through research. Students work together to investigate answers to their questions, analyzing and interpreting the results and questioning what they could do differently to have a more successful result. Then they extend their learning and apply it to real world concepts. I really liked the idea of having the students read about the topic they were learning about AFTER doing an inquiry based activity, because their prior knowledge has been activated and they are more motivated to learn and connect the new knowledge from the textbook to the activity they just experienced. Inquiry based science provides students the opportunity to think and act as real scientists, which helps them to learn and prepare for jobs, college, and the real world. It expands their ability to think critically and problem solve.

Reflection #2: This is a much different way of learning than I experienced in my Science classes. I believe that is why I never liked Science and never felt connected to it. We did a lot of textbook reading, vocabulary work, and labs. There wasn’t much for discussion in our classes, but rather listened to many lectures. It wasn’t hands-on learning except for the labs, which I think is how many students learn best. My son just completed a Principles of Engineering class last semester as a High School Sophomore, and he LOVED it. He did a lot of inquiry based learning that really made him think about the process instead of just following the procedures already laid out for students. Not only was he excited about the class and the activities they did, but he showed a lot of growth throughout the year in his problem solving skills.

Galen Pardo - Journal reflections 7/17/13 To me inquiry is an exploration driven by question. In science it describes the process by which scientists acquire knowledge. For most well know scientists the knowledge they are famous for was not simply given to them to memorize. Quite differently, they acquired their knowledge through exploring the many facets of their respected topics, where each new question would shine a light on yet another new face. This is the process of inquiry. It is the discovery of information; standing in stark contrast to the delivery of information. When we inquire about a topic the direction by which our exploration is to proceed, and subsequently the information we are to discover, is determined solely by our curiosities. This unique way of learning has one overwhelming benefit when it comes to its application in the classroom. When the information being learned is based on the individual's curiosities it is guaranteed to have personal relevance. Where as when the information being learned is determined by someone else it is certain to have less personal relevance to anyone else. From an early age I was involved in many science classes, from those offered in school and several offered outside of school. Many of these classes had exploration woven into the lesson, some more exciting than others. The major difference, however is that it was guided exploration. I found that I would often get myself in trouble because I wanted to go on ahead, and the demonstrations did not allow for this, as you would most certain ascertain the incorrect results. The only times I can remember having the opportunity in a science class to genuinely explore a topic based on my own inquiries, including my undergraduate classes, were situations that either I payed for or made happen on my own time. Even throughout the majority of my undergraduate career, which was ninety percent science classes, my time was spent memorizing the content I was supposed to know. It was then only made marginally better by teachers who would provide us
 * 1) After reading ch. 6 of Best Practices, describe your understanding of what "inquiry" means in science.
 * 1) How does this compare with your experiences of Science class as a student?

Rick Raulin - Reflection #1 After reading chapter 6 of //Best Practice//, describe your understanding of what “inquiry” means in science.

Inquiry –based science involves the student in developing and answering the question for themselves. The process calls for the students to use their prior knowledge and their ability to analyze what will happen to make a prediction of the outcome of an investigation or experiment. Students are not told what will happen in advance and they can potentially change a variable in an experiment (with teacher approval, to make sure it is a safe change to make) to see how the experiment’s outcome is changed, if at all.

When I was taking science courses, the teacher taught the knowledge/lesson then we conducted the experiment to confirm the knowledge taught – we were not encouraged to change the experiment to elicit different outcomes and if we did not get the desired or expected outcome in the experiment **we were at fault and our grade could suffer because of it.**

Inquiry-based science elicits prior information from the students and engages them in the process by letting them help establish how the experiment will be conducted – they read the text and/or get the lesson usually after the experiment has taken place to help them explain what happened and why it happened. When different students or small groups of students choose to change a variable in the experiment, their outcomes will likely be different; however, being different isn’t cause for alarm or a lowered grade… it is an opportunity to learn and discover something new.

The process of inquiry is meant to teach critical thinking skills so students can incorporate new information with their prior information to create more sophisticated current knowledge. They can then take that new knowledge further (elaborate on it) and determine if it is useful for them in the future (evaluate it) to see if they want to use it in different settings or circumstances (extend the learning past this specific experiment).

How does this compare with your experiences of Science classes as a student?

My experience in middle and high school science classes (1973-1979) wasn’t even close to this process of inquiry with the exception of my seventh grade science with Mr. Boylan and my Junior year Chemistry class with Mr. Hanson; these two classes were fundamentally different in that we were encouraged to offer different ways to perform experiments and were supported when we went astray from the predicted outcome but worked to determine what was different and why it resulted in a different outcome. My other teachers taught the material in a lecture fashion, had us perform a hands-on activity (experiment) that confirmed what we were taught, had us write up the results and we were off to the next content lesson and reinforcing experiment. We would typically use the Scientific Method (illustrated above) as a bridge between the lesson from the text and the experiment; however, the question we asked was mostly directed if not provided by the teacher and the experiment we would use was mostly a foregone conclusion.

The reason why those two teachers were so different in process and in experimentation was that they were both Science teachers first rather than a teacher who taught Science. Mr. Boylan had a Masters in Biology and a Bachelors in Chemistry, while Mr. Hanson had a PhD in Chemistry and Masters in both Physics and Astronomy – the fact that an experiment did not turn out as planned offered them a professional challenge rather than an unknown and confusing situation which might reveal their lack of fundamental knowledge in this subject matter. However, they still had us use the Scientific Method which was not how most real scientists would operate in the real world. with explorations of things we were supposed to explore.

Inquiry is a form of scientific investigation where students ask questions and then conduct experiments to find and present the answers to their questions. It's an immersive way to teach science that is much different from the way I was taught. The inquiry process seems to be very student-focused. Students make a lot of decisions about what they want to know and decide (with guidance) how to find information and understanding. When I was in school, the vast majority of my science instruction was lecture-based. The teacher talked, we took notes, then the test asked questions about the lecture. Learning was, for the most part, a one-way enterprise-teacher to student. That model was much different from the inquiry method which is a lot more collaborative-teacher to student, student to student, student to teacher, etc. We would, from time to time, have labs where we would do experiments, but the experiments seemed like just another way to get us to fill out a worksheet of some sort. The teacher told us what to do, we did it and we recorded our results on a worksheet. In the inquiry model, experiments are much more authentic because students are genuinely trying to solve a problem or find meaning and truth. Inquiry is much more focused on process rather than content. I think this is an infinitely better way to approach science since the content of science is never ending. I would have benefitted so much more from learning how to think like a scientist rather than remembering the names of "sciency" (made that word up) things. I can safely say that I do not remember one single thing from middle school or high school science (other than getting sent to the principal's office the day of the frog dissection because I swore). All in all, the prospect of teaching science within an inquiry framework is actually exciting for me to think about.
 * Michael Sheahan**
 * Journal #1-7/17**

Lauren Wittmann __After reading Chapter 6 of Best Practice, describe your understanding of what “inquiry” means in science.__ After reading Chapter 6, I have learned that “inquiry” is a method in which student, in a way, become the teachers. They are encouraged to think outside the box of the experiment to questions exactly why things are happening. They are also encouraged to find the answers to the questions themselves. In this way, students can develop their learning by building off of their unique prior knowledge. __How does this compare with your experiences of Science classes as a student?__ There are many times I remember from my science class that I had further questions about what we were learning. Since we were in groups made up of other students with a step-by-step instructions I felt like I couldn’t deviate from the plan. I believe this hindered learning for me and all my classmates. Also, if we didn’t get the expected ending situation, we must have done something “wrong.” It seems now that these would be seen as teachable moments but in my recollection, we just had to start again where we deviated from the plan and figure out what we did “wrong.”