As I wrote my inquiry lesson plan, created my PowerPoint,
and prepared the materials, I tried to imagine myself in front of the
classroom. I rehearsed what I was going to say during every part so that I felt
prepared upon entering the fifth grade atmosphere. Seeing the students
contribute and bounce off one another’s ideas was very enjoyable to observe. I
was able to witness the students making discoveries together. When the students
had made their conclusions and were sharing their detective process, I felt my
lesson was successful because they all understood and followed the process as
well as had fun along the way.
At the beginning of class, I
reviewed with the students the different battles we had learned during the
direct instruction lesson. The slide displayed four pictures and I pointed to
each asking what battle it was, what year it started, who won, and any other
details they could provide. As mentioned by Jones, Valdez, Nowakowski, &
Rasmussen (1994), “Some common strategies included in engaged learning models
of instruction are individual and group summarizing, means of exploring
multiple perspectives, techniques for building upon prior knowledge,
brainstorming, Socratic dialogue, problem-solving processes, and team teaching”
(p. 1). This introduction activity was to engage the students through
summarizing in order to get them thinking about the American Revolution.
When informing the
students that they were going to be detectives for the day, it was important to
tell them that I felt they knew the content enough to face the challenge. The
students feel more confident that they can figure a problem out if their
teacher believes they can. Since the inquiry process or scientific method was
how they would make their discovery, I had the students remind me of the steps.
The fifth graders knew the steps from experience, which was excellent because I
knew they would be able to implement them more easily. I explained to the
students what each step means and how to fulfill each to refresh their minds. The
image below is one of the slides that was used to explain the third step of the
inquiry process.
The students were each
given a detective report form to fill out as they progress through the investigation.
I went over and showed the students what is to be filled out under each part of
the form. I modeled an example of a hypothesis in the correct form of if, then
as well. The students were split up into five different groups to work in
teams. I feel that hearing another classmate’s viewpoint allows the other students
to see an idea from a different perspective that they may not have thought of
or seen. This calls for higher-order thinking to be used. “Higher-order
thinking (HOT) requires students to manipulate information and ideas in ways
that transform their meaning and implications, such as when students combine
facts and ideas in order to synthesize, generalize, explain, hypothesize, or
arrive at some conclusion or interpretation” (Newmann, n.d., p.1). Higher-order
thinking is taking all of the different perspectives and figuring out how to
put them together to prove a hypothesis or show a different end result that was
discovered. Egbert and Simich-Dudgeon (2000) also
recognize that verbal interactive activities promote collaboration and negotiation
of meaning among learners (p. 22). Through my own opinion and research-based
studies, completing the entire inquiry process in groups was very beneficial to
the students.
After
the students were placed into groups, I told the students that their jobs as
detectives is discovering leaders of the American Revolution. During the direct
instruction guided practice activities, the students were very involved and all
participating in the “Who Am I?” activity. This was where a simple short clue
was given about an individual on the American’s side and the students had to
hold up the picture and name of the person described. I decided to elaborate or
expand on this. Joan Youngquist and Jann Pataray-Ching (2004) find that as teachers create inquiry curricula around students’ interests
and strengths, they also help students broaden the ways in which they think,
question and explore (p.178). This was exactly my plan.
I then
introduced the materials and technology that will be used. Every group was given
five brown paper bags and in each bag consisted of a QR code and a short
paragraph. The students were told not to touch the bags until instructed to do
so. I explained that a college student would be lending their phone to each
group. The phone would be used to scan the QR code and the question would pop
up on the screen. The students got extremely excited and loved the idea of
using an iPhone. When the students were completing the activity I noticed, in
most groups, that a different student would scan the QR code each time in order
for everyone to have a turn. I was really glad that the use of the iPhone was a
success and did not cause arguments. Technology is growing more and more each
day and is such a big part of our lives. This was a way to engage the students
in discovering answers to the questions. Given three minutes and thirty
seconds, every group was to read their paragraph and answer the question. When
the music stopped playing, the students were to finish up their responses and
move to the next bag. Unfortunately the website was not working during the
lesson and a different timer was used without music. I was able to experience
what it is like when plans do not go accordingly. In this situation I realized
how important it is to have a backup plan. Luckily, the coordinating teacher
pulled up a timer that she uses often and did not need to use the Internet to
access it. I made sure that I thought of what could not go as designed for my
cooperative lesson. I will be bringing extra poster board in case a group makes
a mistake. Now, the students were to begin their investigations as detectives.
As the
students read their questions, clues, discussed with one another, and formed a
conclusion I walked around from group to group. I listened to the students’
ideas and answered questions or posed questions to direct students in the right
direction when needed. As
stated, “teachers acting as guides in the learning process are critical to
student success” ("The Evidence Base for Social Studies: Inquiry-Based Learning," 2004, p.1). Even though the students are learning on their own,
the teacher always is supportive of the students progression throughout the
process. An example of this took place when one group was trying to form their
conclusion through all of their ideas and clues. Based on what the students
were describing in the person, I thought it would really help them to look back
at the picture and adjective given on the front of their folder that they used
to form their hypothesis. This does not mean the teacher tells the students the
answers to the questions. The teacher leads the students’ thoughts down the
correct tunnel where necessary.
The last part of the inquiry process
is to share your results. After every group had formed their conclusion, each
came up to explain there process of figuring out the individual through the
clues. This included what clues were really helpful or which clues were hard to
figure out and may have led the investigation to a different person. Also, explaining
who had similar thoughts or who knew a specific detail or two that was very
important. As written, “The emphasis is on telling the story of
the “learning journey,” telling how they, the student(s) arrived at the answer”
("The Evidence Base for Social Studies: Inquiry-Based Learning," 2004, p.1). The idea is for the students to reflect on
how they worked as detectives to make their discovery. To continue exploration,
the students were asked to create a question individually about the leader
their group explored. They were not allowed to use a question that was already asked
in the investigation. The students were to write the answer to their question
in a paragraph response. I realized that I should have had the students bring
this home and do it for homework rather than at the end of class. Several of
the students had a hard time coming up with questions off the top of their head
because they did not know too much extra information about their person. The
students that did create questions could not write a detailed paragraph
response because they only knew the specific answer to the question. If the
students had done the assignment at home, they could have used their detective
skills to research and find information. After collecting information, they
could have analyzed it and formed a conclusion to their question providing
details from the sources used.
The inquiry process gives students a chance
to learn with a little more freedom, but emphasizing the basic skills. Students
are also able to work with different learning styles rather than the usual
ways.
References:
Jones, B.,
Valdez, G., Nowakowski, J., & Rasmussen, C. (1994). Designing Learning and
Technology for Educational Reform. Oak Brook, IL: North Central Regional
Educational Laboratory.
Newmann, Fred M. and Gary G. Wehlage. “Five
Standards of Authentic Instruction.” Educational Leadership. Association
for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Used with permission.
The Evidence Base for Social Studies: Inquiry-Based Learning. (2004). Retrieved April 4, 2015, from http://ims.ode.state.oh.us/ode/ims/rrt/research/Content/inquiry_based_learning_what_we_know.asp
No comments:
Post a Comment