Misconceptions & Inquiry Lessons

During science methods on Tuesday, we worked collaboratively about inquiry lessons.  Inquiry lessons are lessons where the students' understanding are the focus of the lesson, and they are responsible for their learning by participating and exploring. When students are engaged in an inquiry lesson they are developing questions and searching for the answers themselves; they are building their knowledge and exploring. 




Before we began talking about inquiry lessons in class, we were talking about misconceptions.  My group had to think of misconceptions about dinosaurs, violent storms, and seasons. The misconceptions we thought of were all from when we were young children, and the ones that we were able to come up with were:

• Dinosaurs were friendly and were used as pets (like in the Flintstones).
• Thunder is just a family member, in my case, racing in heaven, and lightning is just God taking a picture.
• The groundhog on Groundhog's Day determines how much longer winter will be.

It was a lot of fun thinking of these misconceptions, and we realized that the misconceptions we thought of were either from TV or they were told to us by our parents to keep us from being scared.

  I'm sure by now, you are wondering how do misconceptions and inquiry lessons come together? I will tell you now. 

In our future classrooms, we are going to have students that have different viewpoints and beliefs.  Along with that, students are going to come in to school with misconceptions.  Whether they are the same as the ones we had when were young, or they are different, it is important to make sure that we identify those misconceptions so that students have the correct understanding of the natural world.  We can make sure that this happens by teaching our students inquiry lessons.  Addressing misconceptions by teaching students inquiry lessons is great because students are actively engaged in their own learning. 

Any inquiry lesson should contain the 5 E's, engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate.  Using this lesson format will deepen students understanding of scientific concepts, and they are learning by doing it themselves. 

After class on Tuesday, I realized that exploration was one of the reasons that I enjoyed science so much.  You can read my previous blog post "Science & Me" which is about my journey of science growing up. Since I was able to have that active engagement, I was able to observe, and explore in science, I want my students to be able to do that as well. 

As my group and I were working we found a quote from the class textbook that said "redirect your students' cognitive energy to foster scientific ways of knowing" (DeRosa, 2017, p. 23). Giving students that platform to be engaged and explore is not only helping them to build upon their own knowledge, but it is blossoming a whole world of wonder inside of them.