What does Inquiry mean to you?

I can tell how labs are only improving my teaching skills, this week we had to write a lesson that was inquiry. Now what does inquiry mean to you? I can tell you what it means to me...inquiry is where you give students the skill set and knowledge to take what you give them, identify the problem and than create a solution. For lab I created a lesson titled How much is to much? This lesson focus on economic threshold and field scouting, I have a 6 week long unit on Pesticide Education and I chose to try inquiry in one of them. Now inquiry doesn't have to be full blown inquiry. And that is something I struggle with and I know many of my peers do as well. However we have gained a lot of experience and tools to help us inquiry and to help us teach our own students to inquire.

To set up my students I gave them a lab packet, scales, and cups of raisins... can you guess what they were about to do? We started of reviewing from the previous class where we talked about beneficials and pests which led nicely into how a large population of a benefical such as a lady bug is a bad thing making them a pest. Next students worked in groups to weight the cups of raisins and to record their data, using this data we analyzed an article on economic threshold to determine if we had reached our threshold in our plot of soybeans. It didn't go as smoothly as I had planed however, I believe the students got the idea and I gained a better understanding of inquiry based learning.
Now lets look at what I should have improved on...

• I need to work on stating my objectives at the beginning and ending of class
• I need to be more enthusiastic and gain a strong presence through confidence
• I need to improve on my clarity of instructions
• I need to make sure all parts of my lab handout print on all lab books (oops)
• I also need to improve on my mobility around the classroom

Now not everything I did was bad, I have noticed in myself how I am writing better lesson plans that help me gain confidence, I am also improving on how I create my presence and confidence in front of the class. I have noticed how I don't seem so shakey and nervous all the time (this is something I need to get a hold on because like animals freshman read fear...)

As the semester is winding down we are only gaining more experience and opportunities to jump in front of the classroom. I look forward to getting rid of my bad habits and gaining confidence to get out there and teach!

To find out more about inquiry check out this page it helped me figure out the differences as well as ways to improve my lesson plans!
Also check out this rubric ( great huh!?) it shows that your lesson doesn't have to be 100% inquiry but can start from more teacher centered than move to student centered