Week 11- Inquiry Based

Inquiry based instruction is a great teaching method to use especially in an agriculture classroom. These lessons begin with a question that sparks curiosity and grabs the students interests. This method is helping students to gain confidence in themselves and work on developing problem solving skills in real life situations.  This method also gives students an opportunity to take learning into their own hands. When pushing themselves to think more critically it helps them to improve their own ability and to gain confidence that they can figure things out o their own! We want to use this not only to help better our students but to also use variability and flexibility in our classrooms. This method is very different than a typical teaching lecture style. Although intimidating to students at first, this method can grab their attention as it is something new to them.

Inquiry based learning varies from problem based learning in many ways. Inquiry based is focused more on students discovering the answer to a situation more independently. Whereas, project based learning is working and exploring to the answer typically working along with the teacher. Typically, in inquiry the teacher poses one question or the students develop a question that they are going to work through a process to discover the answer. Problem based , they are given a situation with a problem already established and must work to find the solution with some guidance.

Inquiry based learning is based from five key elements. These elements are essential questions, student engagement, cooperative interaction, performance evaluation and a variety of responses.