04 fall - holly and katie
endothermic/ exothermic reactions

This meeting began with a science resource teacher leading through several exercises about inquiry. This allowed us an opportunity to express some of our fears, concerns and hopes for using inquiry in our classrooms. We also got to see two teachers using inquiry in their classrooms in a local school. The teacher really emphasized that inquiry is a continuum and we realized our lesson study was at the extreme end. At the time we were proud that we had chosen to be that bold.

Physics by Inquiry –

We remember this session being really frustrating because of the complexity of the physics, and because it seemed so easy to find examples of inquiry with physics but not with chemistry. Katie managed to get in a shouting match with Casey over wiring circuits in parallel. Casey and Katie realized how struggle can play a role in the learning process. Katie felt totally overwhelmed and wanted to shut down. Casey then wanted to jump in with the equation to solve her problems but that wasn’t the point of the lesson.

We were somewhat concerned with the issue of safety in the chem lab with our particular lesson. It did help to see different levels of inquiry though. To see that we didn’t have to jump in head first but could build up to a high level of inquiry since our lesson would be late in the year.

documents and resources

 

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