Miller's EDIM 513 Blog

As we near the end of this class, I have learned a lot about Inquiry-based learning. This week our reading focused on the 5e process. This was very enlightening. By using this process to plan lessons, teachers are able to give students a blueprint for discovering the information they need. I particularly like the fact that within the 5e process, there is space for teaching students facts that they will need to design their investigations. I also like that it has built-in space for students to reflect on their learning process. For our last discussion post, I was able to turn a lesson I have been teaching for several years and expand upon it in a few ways I did not think possible using the 5e process. Currently, I do not have any burning questions. I believe the hardest part of implementing this type of lesson plan this year will be the lack of in-person/ group work due to new regulations.  -Kyle

Since my last blog post, I have come to a few new conclusions about inquiry-based learning. The first thing that has changed for me is realizing that inquiry-based learning does not necessarily mean that students need to run an experiment in order for learning to be considered inquiry-based. This was a key realization for me as a math teacher. Oftentimes when I heard inquiry-based learning I thought that it could only be applied to the traditional “science experiments” in a classroom. Inquiry-based learning can be achieved through the use of investigatable questions and simulations. A great math example of this is how changing a ratio affects the final outcome of an event. This does not need an elaborate experiment set up, but still forces students to use the facts they learn about ratios and apply them to a more complex question.   This realization also helped to answer one of the main questions from my last two blog posts, “How can inquiry-based learning be used in an online...

After investigating inquiry-based learning for the past two weeks, my views about the topic have not changed very much. I still believe that inquiry-based learning is a skill that needs to be taught to students at a young age. I also still believe that students need some form of direct instruction to give them the background knowledge that they can then use to form their own inquiry-based explorations and questions. The key to this as a teacher is to guide the students without simply giving them all of the information and answers. I also still believe that students who are given the opportunity to learn about things that they want to know about leads to a much more engaged student population. The challenging part about this as a teacher is keeping the students within the curriculum, while still giving them the largest amount of choices possible.  One thing that I have realized over the past few weeks is that the level of inquiry-based instruction in a classroom can be looked at on ...

When I first heard the term inquiry-based learning two years ago, my mind immediately went to chaos in the classroom. My apprehension stemmed from my view that inquiry-based learning had to involve every student picking different topics and presenting in a million different ways, all while I “guided” them in the least intrusive way possible. While in an ideal situation this is how inquiry-based learning would look, many of us know that this is not always the case. Coming into this class, I had some background knowledge of inquiry-based learning thanks to my district’s emphasis on the topic in the last two years. Thankfully this has helped transform my view on inquiry-based learning to a more manageable system of front-loading students with direct instruction, which gives them the base knowledge they need to succeed. I have also learned that giving students choice, does not have to be a free for all. A lot of student choice can be controlled by setting parameters that do not change the ...