Class Assignment: Teaching Scenarios

One of the scenarios that I initially said I would not teach was scenario #1: “You, as a teacher, are teaching a unit on space. Each day during the unit you read to the class from a chapter book about the solar system. After reading about a particular planet, you ask students to make a statement on the board for inclusions in a letter sent home to parents at the end of the day.”

I feel that this is just rote learning, having children recall facts from a book. It does not get students actively thinking about the ideas to create meaningful learning. By just recalling facts, it does not tell you whether students are actually learning anything or making meaning. They will most likely forget those facts in a few days anyway. One way to make this activity more inquiry based is to have students ask their own questions of the solar system based on the background information given in the book. Part of inquiry is to not just accept what is told to you as facts, but to ask “how do we know this to be true?” The readings in the book could serve as the spark for children to inquire about the solar system. Through doing this, students may also ask their own further questions and seek to find those answers.

Another scenario that I initially said I would not teach was scenario #20, which stated, “You, as a teacher, decide that the best way to introduce your unit on ecosystems is to define the terms that students need to know such as carnivore, herbivore, and omnivore.”

I do not like this one because I think giving definitions is a terrible way to introduce a unit. It does not engage the students whatsoever or get them excited about what they are about to learn. The first stage in inquiry is to engage, and this definitely does not engage students. Instead, I would find interesting ways to engage students in a study on ecosystems depending on the grade level, perhaps through an exploration field trip to a marsh ecosystem, like we did in SME. I will then allow students to come up with their own questions that they have about the ecosystems, to tailor my unit around student interests. After the field trip, I could then give students a bunch of pictures of animals that were found in the ecosystem and let the students figure out how they might relate to one another. The students will hopefully find patterns and draw their own conclusions about the eating habits of certain animals and their relationship to one another. Giving students formal definitions can be one of the last things to do. This activity is more inquiry-based than the didactic approach proposed in scenario #20 because it engages students, allows them to explore an ecosystem. These are the first two steps in inquiry-based teaching.