The Best Advice is Through Others’ Experiences

My social studies methods instructor, Dr. Smirnova, provides my classmates and I with a lot of useful research articles and videos. All of the information I have read from the research articles posted on our e-class page have been helpful to me throughout my experience this semester. I have not read any that have been a waste of time. I have taken notes and recorded key ideas, tips, or instructional methods I can try in the future. Since I am a visual learner, I have found the videos to be excellent guidance for myself. More specifically, the video on inquiry-based lessons has directed me to be able to plan my own inquiry lessons.

For an inquiry lesson, the students need to identify a problem or question. In order to look into and examine the situation, the students must keep in mind the question or problem cannot have a simple solution. “Through using evidence to investigate historical questions, students are given the opportunity to see that history is not just a collection of facts, but rather a rigorously constructed set of arguments” (“What is an Inquiry Lesson?” n.d.). The problem must be complex in order for research to be conducted. If the problem is complex, the different pieces of evidence will contain different viewpoints. This calls for the young minds to look past their initial standpoints and interpret a problem based on the evidence they received. Secondly, the teacher should organize students into collaborative groups. This will differentiate depending on the teacher. Some teachers split students up based on their abilities, interests, or according to a seating chart. I originally thought that groups were always randomly assigned. I personally would want to try several different ways out to observe how my students work with one another before picking the best approach to organizing my students.

During the inquiry process, the teacher is to assist the students. The main point in helping each group is to keep their minds questioning the condition. The students are to be thinking from a variety of perspectives on the situation. In the video, a kindergarten teacher was using inquiry for a science lesson by having her students investigate seashells. Every student in each group had a seashell to look closely at with a magnifying glass. The teacher came over to one group and asked a girl what she sees. The girl told her she sees a lot of lines that are cracked. The teacher then asked why she think there are multiple cracks in her shell. The girl told her teacher that maybe it is from the water. As the student investigates her seashell, the teacher puts more questions out to help the girl come closer to figuring out her problem. When I help my students, the important part I will be conscious of is not assisting too much or too little. If I assist too much, then I will end up leading the students right to the solution or solving the problem for them. If I do not assist enough, then the students may be discouraged and give up in the investigation.

The last very important part of the inquiry lesson is to have the students present their results in the form of reports, artifacts, or exhibits. A common form of closure and assessment is through a report. The assessment would be to “Ask students to write down the hypothesis they judge best supported by the data. Call it a tentative conclusion that can be believed until new evidence overturns it. Assign a synthetic essay on the topic where students answer the inquiry question using available evidence” (“What is an Inquiry Lesson?” n.d.). This is a way for the teacher to see if the student understood the research material gathered, information collected, and analyzed properly using the evidence. The assessment can be more elaborate as well. In the video, one teacher set up a courtroom and had his students dress up to do a reenactment of a Supreme Court decision. Several students were the judges and other students would step up to the podium one by one. The student at the podium would read their argument and the judges would question that student. This is a more memorable and fun way to be assessed for the students. Assessments should not always be given the same way, but rather rotated between interactive and individual.

 Problem-based learning is to be used in all grade levels and helps students to learn adult roles of being provided with a problem situation and having to use problem-solving skills to investigate.

~ Christine Brown

References

Teaching History.org, home of the National History Education Clearinghouse. (n.d.). Retrieved April 4, 2015, from http://teachinghistory.org/teaching-materials/teaching-guides/24123