The Teac{HERR} Way - Explore, Create, Discover

You may have been keeping up with K. Janae's High Fives lately, and if not, don't stress! Here's the latest. In that blog post, I stressed the importance of this desire I have to create a culture of curiosity in my classroom. I want my students to feel like they have the ability to create, discover and own their learning. 

Our contextual lab for this week helped me develop the skills to do just that. We dove into Inquiry-Based Instruction this week, and as always, I'll share my Gems (the good stuff), Opps (areas where I need to work on) and my Targets (my goals for next time). My targets for this lab were to Teach for the Modalities and Direction Follow-Ups. I'm sensing growth in some areas, but am fully aware that I've still got plenty of work to do.

 Gems - 

• Discovery Sheets. In efforts to help ease the process and be sure that each step of the inquiry process (question, evidence, explanation, connection, communication) was completed. I gave them pieces of what would then become their "discovery packets" as we continued throughout the class. This help guide and organize thoughts, and though we didn't get to the last step of communication in the lab, this packet will play a pivotal role in helping students share their findings.
• Literacy Connection. I didn't even plan this part! I paused the learning process at one point to talk through and review some key points and connect vocabulary to what we were doing that day. This led to continual opportunities for check-points, where I paused the learning and created 'marbling' as our word of the day. I also used effective questioning to help establish this cross-curricular connections. 
• Student-Led. I felt fairly good about my ability to allow my students to create their own question for the day. I was able to give them complete power to explore as the "experimenters" that day. Quite honestly, I had the fun part, I got to sit-back and watch and listen as they made observations and discovered differences in fat content in meat.

Opps -

• Student Frustration. This instructional method is so student-led, I become simply a facilitator. I need to be cautious not to rush my students in the process, but to help by asking guiding questions. I don't want my students to become frustrated or unmotivated in the process, I want them to be empowered to feel as though their learning is their own!
• Scientific Content. Inquiry-Based Instruction is built upon the scientific method. Though I had my students create a hypothesis and record data, I didn't follow through in my content with some "scientific" connections. If I was doing this particular lesson again, I'd want to utilize some of those check-points to talk about chemical changes that are occurring or the structure of lipids/fats.
• Felt Need. I want to be continually asking myself if I am truly being purposeful with my activities in my lessons. Looking back, I should have spent more time revisiting the responses the students shared on the board before we dove into creating a hypothesis and helping them understand the power they have as "experimenters" and connecting what was learned earlier in the unit to this discovery day.

Targets - 

• Learning Check-Points. As I practice Problem-Based or Inquiry-Based Instruction, the more I realize that there can be some power in freezing the process to connect where we've been, where we are and where we're going. It's a tool that I hope to continually implement in my classroom. 
• Higher-Level Thinking. Inquiry-Based Instruction takes patient conditioning of my students to be comfortable and aware of the process. However, I think that this method is a great way to enhance and develop critical thinking and creativity in my students and push them to make cross-curricular connections and think a higher level.
• With Purpose.This has been a target a few times for me in this contextual lab experience, but it's something that I want to continually work at. Am I being purposeful in my planning? My students absolutely deserve it!

Simply put, this lab was different then others, a little trickier too. But I am confident in my desire to create a classroom environment where my students are conditioned to discover and explore. 

Simply put, I am excited to play a role in the uncovering of student's passions through teaching methods like Inquiry-Based Instruction. 

Until next time, K. Janae