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Amalia this is a great question! If we don't set up an expectation for how we want our students to act especially during an inquiry lesson the chaos can feel overwhelming. One of the things that we do is modeling our expectations. We give our students examples of what we expect. Even modeling phrases that we would say to each other during different parts of the lab. It is always good to give examples and even non-examples. You can even let the kids participate in coming up with some examples and non-examples. We get our kids used to this idea from the first day of school we have them give examples and non-examples of a student during labs or different scenarios in our classroom.

I have found that talking to students and telling them 'why' it is important for them to behave the way that is necessary tends to be helpful. It is a good time to discuss the consequences of missing out on learning conversations and feeling like you don't know what is happening is what we are trying to avoid. I try my best to make my students in charge of their behavior by outlining and making the expectation clear but also making it clear that they are the ones who do not benefit. 

Another great thing to do during inquiry lessons is to assign roles. You can decide how you want to do this but if you have a group of students have a selection of roles and responsibilities for the students to divide up in each group. This way instead of constantly 'nagging' a student you can always point them back to their role and asking questions like 'are you doing your job properly?' or 'are you meeting the expectation for your role?' This gives the students the opportunity to self-correct. 

I have had much success with both of these! I hope that this is helpful! 

Amalia, that is a great question! As a member of a group of pre-service teachers, we are constantly curious how to be the best educators when we start, but we are also curious how to manage the classroom to the best of our ability. My group learned three easy steps of managing the class during inquiry lessons by implementing the nature of science principles. The three principles are worldview, inquiry, and enterprise. To break them apart, discussing worldview is explaining what is means to the students. For example how does the temperature of the sun affect my students in class, how does it affect the world we live in. Inquiry is simply expanding their thoughts by allowing them to answer questions about why do they think the sun is so hot. Lastly, the enterprise section is discussing the common reaction, 'why does this matter?'. The section allows for us, the teachers, to expand on the lesson and explain why the lesson is useful. 

Hopefully this strategy helps!

Brooke