My Inquiry Lesson
After teaching direct instruction it was time to teach the inquiry lesson to see if students can take what they learned and apply it to a question they want to solve. I was a little less nervous teaching this lesson compared to direct instruction because direct instruction is mainly the teacher doing the work, but inquiry is mainly the students doing the work. Just like the direct instruction lesson, I believe that the inquiry lesson went well, but can use some changes for improvement.
Certain things that was done while teaching this lesson went really well. For example, during the introduction while warming up students were to work within their tables to come up with an answer to the questions. This is good because the WHOLE class contributed to answering questions, not just a few students who are called on. Also, students seemed to enjoy the voki that was played. I think that this was a good way to get students engaged and ready to learn as well as any other entertaining video would engage students for the topic! Also, having a model is very important. I believe that I modeled step by step very well this way students know exactly what is supposed to be done. I think that having a WebQuest for the inquiry lesson was a perfect idea. Students are aware of how to work WebQuest and it meets all the needs for an inquiry lesson which is: for students to think critically while being engaged, exploring, explaining, elaborating, and evaluated . It allows students to work together to explore and model steps of the scientific method and gain a better understanding of what was taught to them by using real life situations. Since the WebQuest requires internet each table had their own ipad that they shared. Students loved the idea of having to work with technology and an ipad. I even had back up articles printed out just incase something happened with the ipads. This was a really good idea because students were still able to get work done if the ipad was being slow or someone on the other side of the table was occupying it. Giving students an organizer was very helpful to them because it allowed them to organize their findings in a coherent way which made it easier to present. I
Even though overall the lesson went well a few adjustments could be made to make the lesson go even better. The students enjoyed the voki, but some students in the back were unable to hear what he was saying. To fix this problem I could have had another side with what the voki was saying and read it out loud to the class this way everyone could hear. Even though backup copies of the articles were made, I should have made more than one copy for each student. This will allow students have an option of weather or not to use the ipad or a paper article and to each have something to read. Also, when the lesson was over and it was time to assign the students homework and the whole class groaned at the thought of having to do work at home. Instead of saying homework, I could say "become journalists" because that is basically what students are going to be doing for the homework. The change in vocabulary can change the whole attitude and mindset of the classroom. I also learned a lot while observing my classmates teach their inquiry lesson. For example, one group gave students a penpal assignment for homework. I thought this was a great idea and an engaging way to see if students understood what they learned. This gave me my idea of having students create newspaper articles for their homework.
Certain things that was done while teaching this lesson went really well. For example, during the introduction while warming up students were to work within their tables to come up with an answer to the questions. This is good because the WHOLE class contributed to answering questions, not just a few students who are called on. Also, students seemed to enjoy the voki that was played. I think that this was a good way to get students engaged and ready to learn as well as any other entertaining video would engage students for the topic! Also, having a model is very important. I believe that I modeled step by step very well this way students know exactly what is supposed to be done. I think that having a WebQuest for the inquiry lesson was a perfect idea. Students are aware of how to work WebQuest and it meets all the needs for an inquiry lesson which is: for students to think critically while being engaged, exploring, explaining, elaborating, and evaluated . It allows students to work together to explore and model steps of the scientific method and gain a better understanding of what was taught to them by using real life situations. Since the WebQuest requires internet each table had their own ipad that they shared. Students loved the idea of having to work with technology and an ipad. I even had back up articles printed out just incase something happened with the ipads. This was a really good idea because students were still able to get work done if the ipad was being slow or someone on the other side of the table was occupying it. Giving students an organizer was very helpful to them because it allowed them to organize their findings in a coherent way which made it easier to present. I
Even though overall the lesson went well a few adjustments could be made to make the lesson go even better. The students enjoyed the voki, but some students in the back were unable to hear what he was saying. To fix this problem I could have had another side with what the voki was saying and read it out loud to the class this way everyone could hear. Even though backup copies of the articles were made, I should have made more than one copy for each student. This will allow students have an option of weather or not to use the ipad or a paper article and to each have something to read. Also, when the lesson was over and it was time to assign the students homework and the whole class groaned at the thought of having to do work at home. Instead of saying homework, I could say "become journalists" because that is basically what students are going to be doing for the homework. The change in vocabulary can change the whole attitude and mindset of the classroom. I also learned a lot while observing my classmates teach their inquiry lesson. For example, one group gave students a penpal assignment for homework. I thought this was a great idea and an engaging way to see if students understood what they learned. This gave me my idea of having students create newspaper articles for their homework.
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