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Deanna,
Well, I am a month late in responding to your post, but I am curious to hear about how your inquiry-based science lesson went. What topic did you decide on? Did you figure out a way to make it inquiry-based? What did that look like in your Kindergarten classroom?
I remember my student teaching program started with “An Inquiry about Inquiry,” which I found so mind-boggling. I found this site that clarifies a bit how the inquiry-based learning approach differs from the traditional approach.
http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/inquiry/index_sub1.html
I have been teaching Kindergarten for years now, but I can relate to your posting because I still struggle with whether or not I am truly engaging students in an inquiry-based lesson.
Arlene’s continuum on the variations of inquiry suggests to me that in my Kindergarten class, I am probably engaging students in more Teacher-Centered Inquiry. I usually start my science instruction by proposing a question, and then encouraging students to suggest ways of finding out the answer. Or I usually provide the students with the materials that they would need to begin to answer the question.
I took a course once on the Project Approach—both the class and instructional strategies were presented by Dr. Lilian Katz. The Project Approach seemed like true Student-Centered Inquiry because the children directed every step of the construction of knowledge. The students decided on a topic, developed questions about what they wanted to know, and then the teachers helped to provide materials, field trips, and other learning resources to help them answer their wonderings. I felt at the time, and still do, that the Project Approach was such a thorough, engaging way to help students capitalize on their natural curiosity, while developing their wonderings and learning so much about a particular topic.
The challenge I faced was that the Project Approach was serious time commitment. I think it would require a large portion of each day over a number of days. The school that I teach at has school-wide curricula for reading and math that all teachers are expected to follow, so with so much time already dedicated to language arts and math, I could not find a way to cohesively pursue a Project Approach style in my classroom.
Has anyone else heard of or implemented the Project Approach?
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