Reviewing the Effective Inquiry Process

In order to create effective lessons, teachers must create inquiry designed lessons in order for students to gain a better understanding of what they are learning. This is especially useful for science-based lessons. In science lessons, it is important to be involved and have the students engage in hands-on experiences. I have successfully used inquiry before when teaching social studies. In this course, I will discover how to implement inquiry lessons in the science classroom. 

Before working with inquiry based lessons again, I need to look at all my resources and refresh my memory on the subject. In this Myths About Inquiry Based Learning article, I discovered things that I did not notice or realize before about inquiry lessons. One of the myths was"Inquiry is using the scientific method." I always associated inquiry with this and when people would ask me what inquiry was, I would usually respond with this myth. After reading the response to this myth in the article, I realized that I was not viewing inquiry correctly. There is so much more to inquiry besides the steps to the scientific method. It is all about solving a problem in various ways. Another myth that was stated in this article was, "Inquiry is unstructured and chaotic." In the response, it discussed how the classroom gets very noisy and that it should be. It shows that the students are discussing and working together. When I used the inquiry lesson in social studies, I was constantly telling the students to quiet down. I realize not that I was mistaken. The students need room to discuss and discover. It should be a good thing to see the students getting actively involved in the lesson. 

I discovered many definitions of inquiry in the article, What is Inquiry? After reviewing all of these definitions, I discovered that these experts have similar but complex definitions of inquiry. It also helped take away my original myth that inquiry was just the scientific method. It helped show me that there is so much more to it. Inquiry is all about making discoveries in various ways such as through observations, experiments, theories, questioning, etc. My favorite definition that stood out to me the most was "Curiosity is the centerpiece of inquiry, and curiosity is indicated by a question or questions. . . . To inquire is to seek, obtain and make meaning from answers to one’s questions. (Hubert Dyasi, Director, Workshop Center, City College of New York, School of Education)" The lessons need to help students develop this curiosity in order to discover more about the meaning that they are trying to find. 

The NASA: 5E Instructional Model, Inquiry, Learning Cycle, and 5E Model, and 5E Learning Cycle  websites are great resources to discover more information about inquiry. They describe the inquiry process and in depth descriptions of the 5 E's (Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate). The 5E Teaching Model for Teaching Inquiry Science and How to Use 5Es videos are also great resources when creating your inquiry lessons. I hope that this helps anyone who is looking for more resources about inquiry designed lessons!