Kate

I love the idea of having students grade their own work after the project is over. I wonder if students tend to grade themselves lower or higher than the teacher? I suppose it depends on the students.

What a great idea! I wish I had thought of this last year. I did something similar to your research project with a 'virtual science fair', and there was definitely a lot of stuff to keep track of.

As others mentioned, finding time during the day to incorporate these types of activities is difficult. Our district curriculum covers all of the required standards, but there's not much 'wiggle room'. I do try to modify existing activities in our curriculum to make them more inquiry-based. This is only my second year teaching 7/8 Science, but I would eventually also like to find at least one citizen science project that connects with each of our standards. I think this would make it easier to incorporate them into our district curriculum. Assessing these projects is also a challenge because, as Mr. Kahler mentioned above, it's a process of trial and error. I do like using rubrics as a way to assess students, but that can change from year to year depending on the level of students I have. English Language Learners are going to need to be assessed a bit differently, for example (especially if they are still relatively new to the language). In the past, I have made a modified rubric for those students which allows for verbal responses rather than just written ones.

I am planning on doing a lot more journaling with my students this next year. Nature journaling using pictures, words, and numbers is so powerful to help student understanding. John Muir Laws has a great site with lots of resources for teachers on nature journaling.

I would agree that remembering to take measurements each day for CoCoRaHS is very hard. I'm also hoping to get help from my students on this project next year.

What a great way to start each day! It's interesting that while dealing with Covid restrictions, you found something new to do with your kids that you might not have discovered otherwise.

I think the most impactful thing for me was just the reminder to slow down and take the time to listen. There are so many noises that I take for granted and never focus on. I realized that I was paying closer attention to specific things related to the sounds - for example, the speed of the water dripping as it sped up and slowed down - not something I would normally notice. It was easy to catch the bigger noises at first, but as I continued to listen I heard more of the subtle, little ones. With kids, I would really encourage them to close their eyes as they listen. I would also talk about how there's no wrong way to do this. If they don't know what a sound is, they can just write what it sounds like or just make a symbol on the paper.

One of my favorite science t-shirts says: "Some people dream of meeting their favorite scientist. I teach mine." I wear that shirt whenever possible to show my students that I think of them as scientists. I have also done the activity that Pam mentioned where students draw what they think a scientist is. Doing this before and after having students read and learn about real scientists is a very powerful activity. One takeaway from that activity is I see more students drawing themselves as the scientist instead of someone else. That's when I know it's making an impact on them. When students see that the work they're doing in citizen science can help scientists, they feel like their work is important. I also share with them a project I did in grad school where I used data from eBird and iNaturalist for my own work (study on lovebirds in Phoenix). I can give them a real, relevant example of how that data is used. So often, we have students who don't understand why they are learning a certain concept in school. When you can show them how their work impacts science both locally and globally, that can be the spark that gets them to understand the 'why'. I love showing students data on maps (eBird, CoCoRaHS, and iNaturalist are all great ways to do this). We can zoom in on our local data, but then we can also look at the bigger picture and do some comparing and contrasting of the data. The third teaching practice, 'attend to the unexpected', is what I think is the most challenging one to prepare for in teaching. It can be the most memorable and rewarding, too. Some of the best teachable moments I've had with my students involved seeing something unexpected. Usually, it leads us down a path of discovery where we all learn something. One of my best memories with this was when one of my 4th graders discovered a cicada shell on the fence in the schoolyard. I opened up my 'I Wonder' board to questions, and they came up with many that I couldn't answer. We took some time to do research to answer the questions, and this led to a mini lesson on cicadas! This year, I'm excited to have a full year in person with my 7th and 8th graders. I plan to build on what I've done in the past with citizen science and try to incorporate a little bit of each of these teaching practices along the way.

When I was teaching 4th grade science, I did a lesson with my students on air quality. As part of that lesson, we looked at the properties of air and discussed how air takes up space even though it is not visible. For the inquiry activity, students had to develop a model that demonstrated that air takes up space. The question was provided to them, along with a variety of materials. However, there were no specific directions on how to create the model. The primary science practice for this activity was developing and using a model. The materials were very simple (ziploc bag, straws, tape, pipe cleaners, string, etc), but it was fascinating to see all of the different directions the students took. They could have simply blown up the ziploc bag with a straw and zipped it closed, but many groups designed elaborate kites to capture the air. It is one of my most memorable lessons from teaching that group. I think this activity was more structured inquiry because I did provide a specific set of materials even though I didn't give them procedures to follow. There is a certain amount of guided inquiry since students don't have those procedures to follow. In order to make it more inquiry-based, I would remove the materials and have them come up with a list of materials that they need. They would have to create a plan of how to carry out the investigation, including materials and procedures first. In this case, the students would use the science practice of planning and carrying out an investigation.

For my initial definition, I said that "Inquiry is the process of exploring the world through questioning and experimenting, which can then lead to new questions to be explored." I see lots of parallels with the science and engineering process as I look at my concept map, and I think the 3-dimensional learning that we do in science fits very well with the inquiry process. A big part of the process is giving students more control over the process. The teachers acts as more of a facilitator and guide - which can be hard to do. As I think about it more, I would add student-driven to my initial definition of inquiry.