Hailey Arnold: Wilkes EDIM

  Since beginning this course, my views about inquiry-based learning have changed. I originally thought that IBL was going to be difficult to incorporate into my instruction, knowing the population of students I have in my classes. I was worried that I would have to sacrifice classroom management. After reading the various resources throughout the units thus far, I realized that that is not the case! Because there are different types of IBL, I can use more structured inquiry, rather than open inquiry. Teaching science allows me to easily incorporate inquiry into lessons in small chunks where appropriate. Previously, I had thought that the entire class period would need to be inquiry focused in order to be effective. The abilities and understandings of IBL also help provide a better picture of what inquiry-based learning is supposed to look like. Keeping those ideas in mind when creating an inquiry lesson will help things stay on track. Overall, I feel like I have a better understan...

  Create a blog entry that describes how your thoughts about inquiry based learning have developed over the past week.   What new insights have you developed? Has anything changed? Are there any "burning questions" that you feel need to be answered? When first logging in for this course, I had the idea that inquiry based learning was something that was going to be difficult to incorporate into my classroom. I believed that this kind of learning was going to be chaotic with little structure. Keeping in mind the students that I have in my classroom and knowing their personalities and learning abilities, I was concerned that I would not be able to use inquiry based learning. After reading the information in Topic C and learning more about what IBL actually is, I realized that with some forethought and planning, I could make it work with my students. With the right topic and lesson, inquiry based learning could be very beneficial in my instruction. With that in mind, I would like...