Corrie

The biggest challenge I faced in the past when doing inquiry based activities was the time it required to go through all of the steps in a meaningful way. It was also a challenge with teaching students how to write and format their reports. What I found was particularly helpful was to go through the writing process together for a simple shared project so they were able to see and participate in building a good quality report together. Then they were able to do this more effectively on their own.

I participated in iNaturalist. I have participated in budburst, nest watch, and feederwatch in the past. All I think have great potential for learning about inquiry and developing hands on science practices and skills.  The challenges I ran into was the time required to do certain tasks, such as checking nest boxes, and timing that within the class time. Outcomes that may come from it are developing a study question and a description of possible ways to test it with what data they would hope to collect.

Activity 2: watching the bird feeder today, I noticed in a mixed flock of black capped chickadees, nuthatches, titmice, and woodpeckers the chickadees visited the feeder the most and the titmice would kick them off of the feeder. The nuthatches spent less time at the feeder, and the woodpeckers didn’t visit the feeder at all.