A Return to Blogging and my thoughts on Inquiry

Well, the last time I blogged was at the end of the "Internet for Educators," course last year. While I enjoyed organizing my thoughts through the process of blogging, and had good intentions to continue throughout other classes and student teaching placements, my blog seemed to fall lower and lower on my list of priorities, and was eventually forgotten. That was until the course, "Using ICT in Education," started again this January. My classmates and I were given the option to blog once a week, or come up with a summative assignment capturing the learning that took place throughout the course at the end of the term. Choosing to blog was an easy choice for me, as I find it helps me through the learning process. I hope that this time I will be able to stick with it and blog throughout my final student teaching placement and into my teaching career. I think blogging is a beneficial practice for all teachers.

The illustration I created above, using "tagxedo.com," is a reflection of my brainstorming that took place when thinking about technology and its many uses. There is one word that I find especially meaningful. This word is, "Inquiry." Lately I have been learning about inquiry circles, and  the inquiry process through the science curriculum. The idea of having an inquiry based classroom has totally shifted the way I feel about teaching. We have talked a lot about how we were taught in the past. The classroom was teacher-led and the teacher gave you all the information for each subject. Students crammed for tests to regurgitate this information. No wonder school sometimes felt like a drag, instead of an exciting place of learning. As future teachers, we are now being taught to teach through inquiry, and allow our classrooms to be more student-led. Instead of "teaching" and providing students with material, we are instead facilitators of learning, as well as co-learners with our students. We provide our students with ways to find the answers to their questions. I feel that researching through various forms of information to find answers is such a useful skill for students to have in this modern day society where information is held at everyone's fingertips. I also think it's important for students to be taught how to properly research on-line. An inquiry-based classroom is an engaging one, where meaningful learning takes place. I look forward to furthering my knowledge in this area, and teaching more through inquiry in my final student teaching placement. A great resource from which I've been learning about Inquiry Circles, is the book: "Comprehension and Collaboration: Inquiry Circles in Action," written by Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels. This book is very helpful in learning how to implement Inquiry Circles into your classroom and I highly recommend it. Until my next blog.... ~T