Level IV Blog "Revisiting Inquiry Post"

1. Think about your hopes for this course. What do you want to learn? How do you expect to grow both professionally and personally from participating in this class?

In this course I want to learn how to become a better educator. This will mainly come through experience now that I am able to spend five full days in the classroom. I expect to develop professionally through goal setting and a plethora of data collection. With the use of this data I will further develop my inquiry and will also become better at the task of analyzing data. Personally, I will develop because I will be able to interact more with my students and really discover why I chose to become a teacher.

2. Consider your fears about this course. What worries you about the class? What concerns do you have as you continue your inquiry work as a part of your final internship?

What worries me about this class is finding the time to do the work alongside being in the classroom five days a week and planning all the lessons. This however will help me manage my time more efficiently. One concern I have as I continue my inquiry work is getting stuck on my inquiry. What I mean by this is not having enough data to collect or having trouble analyzing and then needing to change it. I understand that it is okay to change my inquiry, but I do not want to lose time.

3. Read over your inquiry work from last semester and complete the following sentences:

Last semester my wondering was....

What strategies can I implement in the classroom to reduce the off-task behavior of a student with ADHD?

The moment when the inquiry process made the most sense for me occurred when....

It was when I started seeing trends across some of my data.

One change I made/action I tried related to my practice included...

One change I made is not being too soft on them because if you are pushover they will take advantage. It is important to find a balance.

The most surprising or powerful learning moment happened when...

It happened when I taught a lesson that encouraged my students to ask wonderful higher-order thinking questions.

One thing my supervisor needs to know to help me "create a space" for inquiry in my classroom is...

It is to help me come up with other ideas for my inquiry in case my specific one does not work and ideas for data I could collect to support my inquiry.

One thing my course instructor needs to know to help me write-up and share my inquiry with others is...

It is to help me in finalizing my inquiry so that it is ready to be shared with others.