Science Research and Fieldwork

      We are in our second week and the snow has cancelled another class. This week we met online, as we did last week. This week we discussed the Inquiry lesson and group's progression. This week we were ready for the first day of fieldwork as well. We also began reading our textbook. 

     To begin discussing the inquiry and the 5E's. The five E's are: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate and Evaluate. We discussed the meaning of each of these and their importance in the Inquiry lesson. To begin the engage section is the introduction of the lesson, and the beginning to the teacher's story. This is where the teacher candidates should create an intriguing story for the students to get them interested in the lesson. The second part, explore, is the experiment of the lesson. This is the soul, the body of your Inquiry lesson. This is the part of the lesson where the students discuss the Inquiry method. The inquiry method is: to identify the problem, develop a question, then a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, and finally creating a conclusion. The nest section of the inquiry lesson is the explain section. The part is where the students must explain their findings and elaborate on their conclusion. Explain directly relates to the elaborate and evaluate sections. The students will elaborate their findings and then they will be evaluated through their elaborations. 

     Group 1, my group, have prepared both of our lessons at this point because we expected to have to be teaching in a week. For our getting to know you activity we prepared a game in which the students would roll a pair of dice and answer the question which correlated with the number they rolled. On the same paper as the questions were pictures of all the planets in the Solar System for the students to understand what our topic was about. My group also met today to further discuss, and begin preparing for our lesson next week. We met and went over the lesson two to five times, editing it a bit more each time. My group feels nervous and we may need some more preparation time for next week. 

     Last week I also worked on my About Me project. For my About Me project I used a word generator and used the shape of an apple. I used word such as teach, caring, love, children, elementary and such. I emphasized my want and need to be an educator.