An I3 Experience

The ‘Integrating Instruction Through Inquiry (I3) project was designed for teams consisting of a science, math, and language arts teacher with one preservice teacher to met two weekends. In... See More

The ‘Integrating Instruction Through Inquiry (I3) project was designed for teams consisting of a science, math, and language arts teacher with one preservice teacher to met two weekends. In the second weekend there were paired with mentoring scientists, and they worked together to arrive at the topics for summer experiments before a summer institute. The teams were to gain insight on what integration was really like and to let them produce a learning experience for their students that were both integrated and meaningful. This article journals the experience of one team.

Making Inquiry a Real Life Problem

This article provides examples of how teachers can integrate inquiry, experimentation, and meaningful research and data collection into their science lessons. The project called I-3 (Integr... See More

This article provides examples of how teachers can integrate inquiry, experimentation, and meaningful research and data collection into their science lessons. The project called I-3 (Integrating Instruction through Inquiry), was a collaborative effort between classroom teachers, university instructors, and preservice teachers. Participants were placed in teams where they conducted investigations on a variety of real-life problems. The big idea of the project was to show preservice teachers that inquiry is a ‘natural opportunity for integration of content’. Depending on the investigation, different skills sets and knowledge were acquired. They also discovered ways to integrate math, language arts and technology into their project investigations. Researchers modeled journaling and there were many opportunities for writing – note taking, writing out procedures, practicing writing/grammar mechanics, to name a few. The summer institute project ended with a two-day Scientists’ Convention where the scientist mentors sat on the sidelines and beamed as their teams showed what they had learned. The article drives home the point that it is important to create more realistic learning investigations in the classroom in order to improve the quality of inquiry-based instruction in science.