Julia

Each year I hold a poster contest for 5th graders based on a theme. Students are to research the theme in some way and create a poster. I can use a rubric to assess the creativity of the poster, the amount of information shown on the poster can indicate how much accurate information the student collected and learned, and how well their creativity and information on the poster can inspire action upon others.

• Project Budburst: It involves everyone from children to scientists, can experience all stages of an organism(s); it has several projects that anyone can do with others or individually.
• Anyone can access the database, felt the site is very user friendly (my 6-year-old daughter figured it out), you do not have to have any kind of subscription, fee, or account creation required which makes it nice for anyone to access the data.
• Younger students could partner or work collaboratively to select an organism to learn about and then teach the other students in class about their organism (would take some teacher guidance to ensure students do not pick the same organisms). Older students could use it more to see more of a data analysis style setting to where they pick a certain month or season timeframe they search and select 2-3 organisms and compare the results over a 3, 5, 10 year periods and see if there are any trends in how many of the organism observations there are. This project would also just help students in general with the ID of observations.

I have tried out Seek, I have used iNaturalist before and love it, but thought that since you need to have an account for it that I would try Seek as students would not be required to create an account. Seek is very similar and will answer students' questions about "What is that?" but it also gives them just enough details to help encourage further questions and reference readings. I believe with our county students doing joint remote and in-classroom learning this year that this would be greatly beneficial to students. However, I know that with us having many impoverished students that internet access would be difficult for some students. A hopeful learning outcome is that not only students would be involved and teachers but parents would also become involved as well as any siblings.

For me when creating the sound map the larger the image of what made a sound the louder the sound the smaller the image the softer the sound.   The most impactful thing about creating the sound map was that some sounds further away were louder than closer sounds, this being due to whatever made the sound.   To encourage children to use their senses to observe the natural world more fully I would encourage them to not only listen with their eyes closed, but have them think about what the smells are around them, how do they feel (warm, cold, happy, excited, afraid, calm, etc.), and how do things within reach, without getting up, feel to the touch (this would require making sure area free of things like poison oak). Then at the end have students open their eyes and see what things look like in reality compared to what they imaged in their mind with their eyes closed and can journal write or draw the likeness and differences.  

Wow! In reading this, I would love to know more about this lesson you do (how long does it take, what grades do you do this with and how do students feel about the involvement), and would you give me permission to use it?

I would like to work to include all three practices, but most importantly the "position youth as people who do science". I feel that with building a CS project that my biggest hurdle is getting students engaged and so if I can get them engaged and excited about participating in a CS project that then, I can build more easily into students not only making the connections locally as they will see it as they do the project but then the referrals to reference materials that would help with making the global connections. Finally the "attend the unexpected", I feel that while yes students may feel frustrated at times because they did not get the results they expected, that this will help them to learn to be flexible and that it is okay to re-evaluate our expectations and come to new conclusions.

As a non-formal educator, it is rather challenging sometimes to be able to do a full inquiry lesson as most of the groups I teach I get 30-minutes to 1-hour with the students and generally don't have them again. Upon reflection, most of my lessons I feel are confirmation inquiry. Example: Each year I teach 4th graders rocks and minerals after they have had a trip to the local gem mine. I take items for students to test different rocks and minerals, I already know what each rock and mineral is but the students are not told what they are, they however have a multiple-choice list to select from. I discuss with them the rock cycle, and how they can test for the hardness, luster, cleavage, and streak. Students are divided up between stations to rotate around and try to figure out what the rocks and minerals are that they were given. Changes to make this lesson structured inquiry is to allow students to bring and test the rocks they collected from the gem mine field-trip and have a reference book, have them take blank paper and pencil around to the testing stations with them to note their findings at each station then help them to determine their rock or minerals that they found at the mine.