Project and Inquiry Based Learning

To use inquiry based learning in the classroom it is important to know the defination and all the components of this learning method. Inquiry-based learning is based on student’s involvement with the teacher and other students in the classroom. This involvement leads to understanding of the content and builds the skills of students. The word inquiry is defined as seeking the truth or information. The students build knowledge through discovery, asking questions, and seeking answers. Inquiring begins for most of us as babies, when we are trying to figure out the world around us, we smell and taste different things. Thus, inquiry is used with our five senses. It is our job as teachers to understand how inquiry-based learning can help our students and us in the future.

In the classroom we need to give the students the opportunity to quest for knowledge. To use inquiry-based learning in classrooms a teacher should allow her students to ask questions when they need to. It is important to ask students to examine and find clues, to ask questions about filling in the missing information and questions on what can be predicted or tested.The students should take their knowledge of what they have learned and use it in many different ways.

 

Project-based should alwyas include inquiry and is engaged learning through activities based on the student's interest.Students work together to create their own ideas and build knowledge through projects they work on for days, weeks, or even months. The students are able to work hands on, with such subjects as science in nature, or math. In depth activities are used to motivate students to solve problems in the classroom and in the world they live in. To use project-based learning in the classroom the teacher should plan out ideas that students can build upon and work in groups to complete a goal. The group may come up with something they see as a challenge or a problem and work together to try to overcome it.  It enables the students to work together in a more up to date learning style. Each student contributes to the learning and knowledge of the project.

 

A unit that I will be working on for the next few months will be a second grade science topic on changes. The TEKs that I will be going along with is:

TEKS:7) Science concepts. The student knows that many types of change occur. The student is expected to:

(A) observe, measure, record, analyze, predict, and illustrate changes in size, mass, temperature, color, position, quantity, sound, and movement;

(B) identify, predict, and test uses of heat to cause change such as melting and evaporation;

(C) demonstrate a change in the motion of an object by giving the object a push or a pull; and

(D) observe, measure, and record changes in weather, the night

 

My Essential question for this topic is: How does the earth change?

 

My Unit questions for this topic are:

What about the weather is different from yesterday?

Why is the sun not visible at night?

How does a volcano create more land?