Amy

The biggest challenge I face every year when leading inquiry based activities in school is the lack of time.  In public schools, there is so much pressure to "cover material" and get through so many science units (not to mention all the other subjects).  I never feel like I do it justice.  I don't really have a solution for this problem, but I just continue to struggle with it each year.

I like to take students outside a lot to do nature journaling.  I always struggle to find time to regularly discuss what we found and to encourage questioning like this.  I usually am good about it at the beginning of the year, but as the demands roll on throughout the year, I tend to do it less and less. We also have a "specimens table," where students bring in interesting things they've found out in nature-feathers, sticks, rocks, leaves, honeycomb...  That's always a favorite place to go and explore, a way of bringing nature into our class.  A lot of interesting questions begin at that table.  I want to work on being more purposeful in drawing out these types of questions with students this year.

Gorgeous!  I'm so jealous of your art skills.

I agree that taking kids out to experience nature first-hand is a fantastic way to support wondering and questioning. This reminds me very much of some of the professional development I've done around working with primary sources and also VTS (visual thinking strategies).  I admit that I do struggle with this in science, however.  Since there is pressure to "cover material" and get through several science and social studies units in a year, I think I sometimes don't allow enough time for this kind of open-ended questioning in science.  Also, I sometimes struggle with the I Wonder board.  It usually fills up pretty quickly and then can become unruly.  Some of the questions we come back to or do lead to student investigations, but a lot of times they just stay up there indefinitely.  Do people change out their I Wonder boards with each unit?  How do you keep them fresh and meaningful for students?

I plan on using this whole unit this upcoming year.  I started with it this year and then when Covid hit, things went sideways.  The thing I'd like to get better at this year is becoming more familiar with some of the Citizen Science platforms so I feel more confident using them in the classroom with students.  I think I will start with Celebrate Urban Birds.  I really want to have a deeper understanding of eBird so that I can capitalize on all the rich opportunities for data analysis.

The three key teacher practices are: position youth as people who do science, frame work globally and locally and attend to the unexpected.  Without knowing it, I think I kind of attend to the three practices, but I definitely want to be more intentional about it now.  I was really fascinated by the term ESA, or Environmental Science Agency.  I had never heard that term before and I'd like to think some more about that.  I looked at the citation and want to do some of my own inquiry around ESA now.  Great article!

Last year I taught fourth grade and was working with the Investigating Evidence unit.  We had been studying local birds from day one, and the students were really intrigued with the investigation called Will a Fake Cat Scare Birds? They wanted to replicate it to see if they'd get the same data here in Los Angeles and interestingly enough, we did not.  So that led to a whole bunch of wonderings that consumed us for about a week.  Most of the birds that came to our feeders were sparrows and so the kids began researching sparrows and trying to figure out different investigations they could do to figure out more about them.  Their hypothesis was that sparrows are smarter or more brazen than the birds in the initial experiment. (Unfortunately the student just said "birds," and never identified what types of birds were involved in her investigation, so we couldn't compare.)  What started out to be an introductory confirmation inquiry ended up moving into a more open inquiry.  It was a great jumping off point for students to begin their own open inquiry as we progressed through the unit, but unfortunately COVID hit and we left it there.  Some students did continue with their own open inquiries related to birds from home and I tried to support them the best I could.  Luckily I am looping with this class and will have them as fifth graders next year so we'll have plenty of time to finish up and present our investigations!

A great example of authentic place-based inquiry.  I've been thinking a lot about insects recently because I just finished reading Nature's Best Hope by Douglas Tallamy.  It's all about native plants, but he writes a lot about how people don't know much about insects and as humans, we don't care about or protect the things we don't know about.  He goes on to explain how insects are really the glue that hold ecosystems together.  It got me thinking a lot about how I might try to incorporate entomology into my own classroom.  You've sparked some ideas...

This sounds really wonderful.  A great way to incorporate the engineering design process!