Ch. 1 – Inquiring
Minds in the Classroom
Reading Reflection
Journal
Question: How do you see yourself using this information in
the future?
While
reading this chapter, I began to visualize how exactly I would use the inquiry
method of learning in my future classroom. As I read the opening vignette about Kelly's classroom, I
latched on to the idea of "active exploration". During her soil unit, her students were
individually exploring while comparing experiments to one another, in order to
complete true scientific experiments.
In my future classroom, I would love to use active exploration during
many science experiments. This idea links directly to the process of using
scientific notebooks, as I would love to allow my future students to feel like
"real" scientists.
I
liked the idea of considering an end result, again, as Kelly did while creating
an inquiry based activity. I plan
on analyzing how my future students may react to certain activities, while
using a common inquiry thread throughout science activities. Along with this idea, I felt very
strongly about the mentioned idea of trusting your students. I believe mutual respect and trust are
extremely important in any kind of classroom setting. By providing responsibility and mutual respect, students
will do the best work possible.
Because
many elementary teachers are not required to teach full units of science
sometimes, teachers do not always feel the need to heavily teach the
sciences. However, I really liked
the idea of covering fewer topics in greater understanding, in terms of
elementary science. Students, like
the ones in my future classroom, will greatly benefit from exciting, hands-on,
inquiry based science lessons. I
hope to remember this while teaching in the future, especially considering that
students must do the learning themselves to get the most out of their
education.
The
5E model used to promote inquiry again reminded me of the steps used while
creating and using science notebooks.
I believe the steps are well-divided and very realistic to use in the
classroom during science instruction.
However, I would probably like to personally add more discussion and
questioning among peers while working with my future students. I really liked how frequently this idea
was mentioned when reading about science notebooks, and is something that can
be very applicable in my future classrooms.
