Karen Conlin
Grade 5
Rochester, NH
December, 2010

How inquiry has impacted my teaching

When I think about how inquiry method has impacted my teaching practice, I have to think back to what brought me to the program at Rivier College. A colleague of mine was looking to mentor a fellow teacher and join her in an inquiry method program. At that point in my young science teaching career, I was already fed up with the mundane drivel science textbooks provided. I thought where is the excitement in my students' eyes? How am I going to get these kids excited to become future scientists if I can't even feel a spark of excitement as a teacher. The next generation of young scientists needed me and this request to become a mentee was intriguing. I figured I should see what it would be about, and if anything, I could come out gaining additional content knowledge in science. How bad could it be?

As I arrived with my colleague I was instantly curious. Large soda bottles on the table, water plants, fish, snails, and other various items lay in buckets and tanks in front of me. I thought this couldn't be for us? I'm sure it's apart of an undergraduate classroom experiment about innovative science teaching. We were here to talk about inquiry methods in science. I assured myself I would be provided a power point and loads of handouts to file under my science binder which is place right beneath all the dust in my classroom.

The facilitator began to speak and I studiously listened and jotted down various notes and key points. They then spoke about how to implement inquiry in the classroom. At this point my understanding of inquiry was that of student centered activities involving answering questions regarding a chosen science topic by the teacher. As I listened to other teachers from schools across the state it was revealed that inquiry dives much deeper then my novice understanding.

The day progressed into an exploration activity. We developed a bottled ecology project that used every material on the table which had initially sparked my curiosity at the beginning of the day. After this, I was hooked! I couldn't wait to share this with my students and bring the excitement I had experienced with collogues back to my classroom.

Over the next three years of being a part of the Rivier inquiry program, I found my understanding and use for inquiry to grow in my classroom. I brought more and more exciting and captivating experiments such as the above mentioned into my classroom. I allowed my students to explore and give up the control I initially was so hesitant to give way to. My students had been given back the classroom and they were learning at a phenomenal speed.

Inquiry was impacting how I approached other content areas as well. Instead of presenting a math problem on the board and having students regurgitate the information back to me. I had students exploring different ways to solve or discover patterns with numbers on their own. Even in spelling, students would need to explore the words and discover what the pattern was for the week instead of memorizing the spelling of each word for the test. Across curriculum I saw inquiry creeping in, and my teaching style move from teacher centered to student centered. I was so proud to have found this template and apply it to other subjects other than science. I saw my students' enthusiasm and excitement for learning increase. I was particularly impressed with this year's science journals in my classroom. After working on inquiry based activities a few times prior, my students were developing wonder statements about the wind in their science journals. What my students came up with amazed me. Questions such as, "What color is the wind", and "How can we measure the wind if we can't see it" were being pondered in my classroom. These eight years olds were driving there own learning and discovering new phenomena on there own with ways to test their thinking through exploring and experiments.

The impact of developing learners that have the skills to guide their own pathways of learning will forever stay with that child. I have found this program to be rewarding not only for my students, but for myself as a professional. I am grateful to have found and be exposed to such impressive teaching methods so early in my career. I will forever teach with this approach and know that I am creating life long learners in my students through inquiry based teaching.