Reflection

I read this article name Valuing Little Steps toward Inquiry, which talks about the ways to nurture and build a inquiry-based science ambiance, and five essential features of inquiry. The fi... See More

I read this article name Valuing Little Steps toward Inquiry, which talks about the ways to nurture and build a inquiry-based science ambiance, and five essential features of inquiry. The five features focus on offering more opportunities for students’ social interactions that occur while practice scientific inquiry (David & Phyllis, 2012). The first feature is engaging in scientifically oriented questions. First the teacher should respond to students’ spontaneous questions effectively, with necessary evaluating these question, while respond in a way can foster students’ thinking, motivation to explore, and reasoning(David & Phyllis, 2012). The second feature is giving priority to evidence. When after observations and experiments, students conclude and discuss the result combing with data. They need solid evident to backup their analysis and result. Forming explanations from evidence is the third feature. Students need to write explanations from evidence they assembled. Firstly, they need to have their own data, which is inclusive of prediction or hypothesis, implement, and observation, as well as write what they have learned from this exploration. During this process, students would learn that, in order to conclude and write what they learned, collecting evidence is imperative. The fourth one is linking explanations to scientific knowledge. This denotes that when students explain something, they may connect their prior knowledge, and apply the knowledge they learned before into explanation. Communicating and justifying explanations is the last feature of inquiry. Teachers are encouraged to create productive communication and collaboration, which is a non-threatening climate where ideas and multiple perspectives of everyone are valued. For example, build a logical argument collectively and discuss it together with students (David & Phyllis, 2012). The“inquiry" in this article is more than asking questions and responding. It involves stimulating students thinking and asking scientific questions, give priority to evidence, using evidence and scientific knowledge, to develop explanations, and to communicate logical explanations to others. It serves as seeds, which needs to continue to grow and develop over time.

Student Involvement Because of Inquiry

The article lists 5 steps that teachers can take to incorporate more inquiry-based learning in their classroom. Each of the parts of inquiry-based learning as described by Grueber and Whitin... See More

The article lists 5 steps that teachers can take to incorporate more inquiry-based learning in their classroom. Each of the parts of inquiry-based learning as described by Grueber and Whitin encourage the participation and involvement of students in the classroom, versus having a teacher-centered learning environment. To explain the features, the article provides real-life examples of each. The examples show how teachers acted as facilitators of learning to guide students to use their prior knowledge to connect to their questions in order to answer themselves. Teachers also value the students' questions and encourage the class to help each other out in answering each other's questions.