Alex

Time pressures make allowing students the space and freedom to conduct the investigations a challenge. These rich experiences take a longer period of time than we often have in a term or learning period. Accessing the required materials is also a challenge due to limited budgets, and also due to timing - when students are allowed to follow the inquiry process often you don't know what they will need with enough time to source materials or experiences. Access to natural spaces is also challenging in city areas and more oganisation and funding is required to go off-site for these places. Setting boundaries with the students around what investigations we have the capacity to achieve can help to tackle most of these challenges.

I have used Birdata, a bird survey citizen science project, with students. The challenges I experienced were mostly to do with recording the survey. This is because we went out as a class but could only enter one survey on the Birdata app. This meant students recording their bird sightings on a printed survey sheet, then when we went back to the classroom, entering the data collected into the app using the classroom screen so all students could see it. It did not quite have the same impact I imagine it would have had if all the students could enter their data themselves. Perhaps we can try students doing the surveys in smaller groups and entering it themselves next time, now that they have had some experience. Students learnt bird ID, scientific survey methods, observation skills, data collection, team work, data entry.

It was interesting how focused I was on the task. It was nice to do something that wasn't on the computer, and I found I know the sounds of the neighbourhood quite well. I think this would be a great activity to do with students to encourage them to use their senses more fully to observe the natural world. It would also be quite good without the sound map, with eyes closed, and to experience physical sensations and smells as well. 

1. Position youth as people who do science: I wish to model this through enabling students to not only submit their data to citizen science projects, but also to act on their data themselves, to work out what actions they can take, based on their research, to make improvements. 2. Frame the work globally and locally: as with the above, I would like to motivate students to take action on a local scale through citizen science projects to make improvements. 3. Attend to the unexpected: This is always a challenge as an educator, to allow the unexpected to happen, as it can feel like a loss of control of the learning, however, it's often when really exciting learning happens! So it's certainly an aim to model this more in my teachings.

A structured inquiry activity I deliver with students is a bird survey to determine presence/absence and abundance of birds in the school grounds using a set survey method. My students develop the ability to carry out investigations. This activity could be made more inquiry-based by allowing students to think about why we might want to know about the birds that visit our school grounds, to develop the questions themselves, as well as then deciding how we can find out. Then to look at the data and communicate it to others.

Each student is different, and as with all areas of the curriculum, teaching and learning for each student is differentiated according to their needs and abilities. Students will be assessed based on their individual learning growth shown through the project.