It was great to read the responses to this weeks topic. I like how we were all able to research different topics independently, allowing us to come up with various resources to share with the rest of the group. I was surprised to see that so far only one other person (unless I missed someone) did the same topic as me, inquiry-based learning. Perhaps this is because not too many people are familiar with it? However, I will respond to Yuqi’s post, and update this post with a reply to someone else once I see another inquiry-based post.
In response to Yuqi:
Hi Yuqi! Glad to see we picked the same topic. Inquiry-based learning is pretty interesting! Being in the B.Ed program, it has been neat to see inquiry-based learning actually taking effect in the classrooms I have been in. For example, in one of my classroom visits, the students were working on a sort of book report, where they got to choose whatever book they wanted, and ask whatever questions about that book that they saw fit. This was really cool to see after learning all about this type of learning, seeing it first hand and seeing how it really does work.
Moving on to your post, I like how you mentioned that asking “open-ended questions” is important so students can come up with their questions. This is a very important part of inquiry-based learning, making sure that students can remain independent throughout the process. I also liked your resources that you found, especially the Ai et al. resource with the diagram (Inquire, Research, Evaluate, Construct). I like when a resource gives you a quick definition that is easy to understand. I also like your point of how inquiry-based learning can increase a students’ participation. When a student is researching something they are interested in, they will want to actually learn about it!
Finally, I just thought I would pass on a couple of the resources that I used while researching for my blog post.
The first is a website I found that really easily explains inquiry-based learning and the benefits of it:
Next, this YouTube video was really helpful in explain it and giving examples of the different ways it can be seen as or used for:
Thanks!