Daniel Chapman 20 October 2013 Fieldwork Seminar Fieldwork Journal Week #7 Draw connections between a course reading and

d something that is happening in the field. In my methods course at Penn, Teaching Middle & Secondary School Science, we have recently been going through the book Teaching High School Science Through Inquiry by Douglas Llewellyn (2005), and it has hugely influenced my recent thoughts around my own classroom, and specifically in the direction that I want my classroom to be moving towards in regards to curriculum, question asking, and the kinds of assignments that I want to be designing. The majority of our readings from this book have worked to answer questions regarding the general nature of inquiry based teaching, how inquiry classrooms compare to traditional classrooms, and many examples of how traditional cook-book labs and assignments could be reworked with an inquiry lens. Although, what has really stood out to me from Llewellyn's writing, has been his insights into how to best transition his students into inquiry activities if they have no prior experience in inquiry (p.65). One of the mindsets that I can often get stuck in while planning or thinking out activities, is that my students would have a difficult time engaging in a completely inquiry led activity, and that in addition, I wouldn't be able to facilitate or plan student-initiated inquiry to the best my ability. So I feel like I have to compromise, or find ways to make it more teacher led and subsequently closer to the "cookie-cutter" activities that we've all had far more than our fair share of.. I don't believe that this is bad, but I can often loose sight of the process that it takes to get to inquiry learning. For students who haven't experienced inquiry, it is difficult, and it does take time to work into and develop. It takes babysteps to get there, but I believe that it is important that we actually take those baby steps if we want to get there. This week, I was able to initiate a project with a guided approach to inquiry, in which I let each student choose their own biologically important element and learn about different aspects of it through research in the textbook and on the internet, and then report their learnings through the form of their own poster (Appendix I). The scope of this project was broad, in that I wanted it to be an introduction and baby-step into the kinds of inquiry assignments that I would like to start implementing, and I wanted it to be an assignment that encouraged my

students to feel like they have more stake in the classroom, they would get to have some choice, some say in how they would learn the information, and their work would get to be shown in our classroom and in the hallway. The final projects turned out great (Appendix II), I think that some students really loved the assignment and totally took advantage of it, as apparent through their project's appearance and the extent to which they managed their time in completion. Although some students seemed to be disengaged and not nearly as excited to be completing their project; this is where I need to go back to the drawing board and think about what I can improve for our next class activity, to get those other students engaged. I think that the biggest thing that could have improved this class was better time management, and a real sense of urgency communicated to my students. Alongside this, the assignment could have been streamlined by providing a resource list of direct websites and page numbers; although this would have removed some of the inquiry, it might have been a better, more guided place to start from. In addition, I wasn't anticipating the amount of students who were absent either Friday or Tuesday, and this definitely slowed us down; students who were absent on friday had to start late, and students who were absent on Tuesday weren't able to finish what they started on the same pace as everyone else. These insights will definitely effect how I will plan my upcoming lessons, and in particular, future multi-day inquiry assignments. I think that this assignment was a great first step towards building a inquiry-minded starting point for my students, and it was incredibly productive in developing my own approach towards project planning and facilitation. Works Cited: Llewellyn, D. (2005). Teaching high school science through inquiry: a case study approach. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press. Appendix: I. Element Poster Assignment For this project, Id like you to research a specific biologically important element and highlight what youve learned in a poster. First, choose one of these six elements to research: Hydrogen Carbon Sodium Oxygen Potassium Nitrogen

Answer the following questions, you can use any of the available resources provided in the

classroom for research (e.g. computers, textbooks, teachers, previous notes..). 1. What is the chemical symbol of your element? Atomic Number? Mass Number? 2. Determine the number of protons, electrons, and neutrons of your element? 3. When was your element discovered? Who discovered it? 4. Determine where your element is found in nature? 5. How is the element important to living things? 6. Draw the Bohr model for your element. Once you have answered the above questions, you may use the provided supplies to create a poster to report your findings. II. Element Poster Final Product