Science is About Inquiry Commentary

These articles gave a comprehensive overview of Inquiry in Science and strategies for effectively and correctly implementing it. The following are comments of strengths and weaknesses of each:

Myths About Inquiry Based Learning: This article clearly points out that inquiry is for everyone, is equally or more important than "beefy" content, has no specific steps or structure, the teacher is simply a facilitator to student learning, can be assessed, is not prominent enough as a fad for science teaching, and is clearly misunderstood. I thought the approach of this article was powerful and the support for every claim helped to solidify the information given.

What is Inquiry: This chapter really dove into the real definition or meaning of inquiry, the cycle of inquiry, the misconceptions, examples of how inquiry learning would look, and the most interesting part for me was the section on how inquiry is a thinking skill and students develop their inquiry thinking skills through this type of learning being only guided not taught by the teacher.

5E's: I like this simple yet comprehensive learning cycle. This is something I would love to create a poster for on my classroom wall and strive to teach by. This way of having students create their own knowledge, understanding, and experiences is more memorable for them and more conclusive.

Inquiry, The Learning Cycle, and the 5E Instructional Model: This article added to the previous NASA one by expanding upon the collaborative nature of the 5E's and how this model and inquiry correlate with and differ from the BSCS Standards as for what the students and teachers are doing during these inquiry based learning cycles.

5E Learning Cycle: This was a concise representation of the model but I felt it lacked many important points and explanations that would be important for an educator to know before using this model.

Video Lecture (commentary on each E from the 5E's Model): As for Engage, I would argue this is the most important step because if students to not have initial engagement or curiosity the rest of the Es fall apart. This also relates the topic to something relevant in their own life. The explore phase to me is the fun phase where children get to actively learn and manipulate their environment to create their own understanding and knowledge. I like the Explain phase because this is where the children are explaining their findings and learning to each other which is then clarified by terms and concepts the teacher provides. I like that the explanations are student provided and centered.  The elaborate phase to me just makes sense for learning: people learn by repeated practice. This also leads to differentiating by interests which makes the learning personal and memorable. Evaluating done by students and by teachers is a brilliant way to conclude this inquiry model. The students have been actively learning and so it makes sense they should be actively assessing their learning as well.