Taking the dive into inquiry

Today during our third field experience Shannon and Sara taught their Indirect / Inquiry lesson. I thought this was a very interesting lesson to observe because in my field experiences I have not seen many of these types of lessons. Inquiry or problem-based instruction revolves around a problem that students work to solve. This is similar to cooperative learning in that students are often put into groups and are working to complete a desired task. However in problem-based learning, the focus is not on social interaction to solve a common problem, but rather the students methods of solving a given problem.

Even though Shannon and Sara were hard on themselves about the lesson there was a lot that went well with it. Their introduction was helpful because it gave students review about the different Native American tribes and also helped students to review the shelter, means of transportation, and food inherent to these tribes. Moving on to the development, the students were given an activity in which they were to use the given materials to fill in the required information on a template, and use this information to justify a hypothesis they created. Students were then asked to share their group findings before being given a worksheet to complete as independent practice / homework. While all of the components of an effective inquiry lesson are here, improvements could be made in some areas.

• A better explanation / modeling of a hypothesis could have been given.
• Steps of the development could have been split up and discussed during the lesson to help children that have problems and provide feedback.
• All groups should have been allowed to share at the end, but this was more of a time management problem than anything else. 
• Inquiry activity may have been a little difficult for 2nd graders.
• Text size could have been bigger on the handout. 

Again, I think the lesson was good overall. All of the components were there, it was just a matter of fixing some activities, and details. 

Photo Credit: Julie DeBellis