Group+Inquiry+Page

(4) Which activities involve inquiry based learning and why?

I think Jen’s activity involves inquiry based learning. In her class, students can construct a graph and manipulate it. Students can see different outcomes according to different distance and time. Students can explore questions by using student exploration sheet. - I too liked the activity that Jen posted. Especially at that level it can be difficult to relate such math to real life situations. Anything that can place a student (especially a teenager in Algebra/Trig) in a real life situation and get them imagining the situation and pondering the outcome is a great activity. - Mary Hi everyone! Mary, i know you said your activity was about insects, but when I click on the link a blue bird activity comes up. Regardless, I like the blue bird activity. I think it is very age appropriate and really gets the students to be creative and think. I like how it has them draw pictures with guided questions that follow so they can think about what belongs and should be included in their pictures. - Jen ﻿ :: I like Jen's activity too, and agree that it is the one that most demonstrated inquiry based learning. -V

(5) Which activities did not involve inquiry based learning and why?

I think my activity did not involve inquiry based learning. Although this website is interesting and attractive, it did not need students to do activities involved inquiry. Even though there are some questions in this website, students can easily find out answers. It did not need students to create anything by themselves. If students are interested in this topic – Rainforest, they can broadly read other resources. However, if they are not, students would do nothing after reading this website. Qi, I know exactly what you are saying. In this process, I too have often found myself reflecting back on many activities wondering if they are purely researched based or actually tying in some higher level thinking. Especially in the primary grades when the fundamentals seem so important, it can be hard to come up with more creative ways to get our students to think deeper. I also noticed your website to be attractive and interesting yet less inquisitive, you coined it perfectly. Hopefully together we will come up with more creative ways to instill inquiry within our curriculum webs. - Mary I completely agree with you two girls! I too see how it can be hard to really tap into higher order thinking with basic and lower level concepts, especially in primary school. For example, 2 + 2 = 4. Yes, you can make it harder by adding two digit numbers with remainders, but I don't see any real higher order thinking that you can really tap into. Maybe, having them create an addition problem using two digit numbers whose sum is greater than 120? However, I still feel that is not very inquisitive. Qi, I think your site is nice and I love how it shows students work, but I have to agree with you in that the students aren't being challenged to explore anything or come up with new information on their own. Tori I feel similarly about your Harry Potter activity. I think that while it is fun I don't know that the students are engaging in higher order thinking. They are pretty much using what they know about Harry Potter to be creative and create a three dimensional model for one of the characters, and then picking questions to interview the author. - Jen :: I agree as well - every time I think the students are really delving deeper, I also second guess and wonder if it's just regurgitating information. Jen, it's funny that you say that regarding the HP Quest - I thought the 3D model was the one part of it that touched on deeper learning! -V

(6) Identify which is the best inquiry based activity and explain why you chose it?

I think Jen’s inquiry activity is the best. This activity make students engage into this class. Students can make students create graphs by themselves, which develop their creativity and satisfy their curiosity. Most importantly, what students learn in this class is closely related to the real situation. Therefore, I like Jen’s inquiry activity. - Possibly because I teach younger aged children I chose to the web quest about insects. I was really excited to find this web quest and am hoping to implement it in a revised form in my own classroom. I think it is important when learning, especially about living beings, to be able to put ourselves in their shoes. While this is the example in science, we can also do this in History by going back in time or even in Language arts by theatrical performances of the characters themselves. As I was doing the activity I felt how students can feel a sense of leadership and initiative which is so important to help further a lesson and come up with new ideas to build upon. - Mary oI think my activity and Mary's activity are inquiry based for the fact that they are getting students to think, ask, and answer questions. In mine, students are relating real world situations to mathematical models and seeing how changing the variables effects the outcome. They do this through exploring and manipulating the interactive gizmo. Mary's activity (on Blue birds) has students learn about the bird and answer some great questions about the bird. It also has them express their knowledge in an artistic way by drawing certain situations. The guided questions listed below their picture can help them produce an accurate picture. - Jen :: I also think Jen's and Mary's are the best. I had a really difficult time finding ELA webquests that satisfied the inquiry learning requirements - many just consisted of drills for grammar and other things like that. That surprised me, because I thought that ELA would be the easiest to work with in that way - putting yourself in characters' shoes, etc. It makes me wonder whether my own activity will be good enough.

-By Qi Sun