EDIM 513 Trevor Pawlik

This week, we focused a lot of our time on learning and applying the 5e education model. My school has had us teach this way for the past three years, so it was refreshing to understand the concepts before reading about it. After this week, the new insight I have about this model is how to apply different technology to enhance their learning on the subject being taught. The burning question I have after this week is how can we make the 5e method of learning adapted for students with special needs and have them included in the learning process?

The past two weeks have flown by with so much information being presented to me. I have obtained a new insight on how to apply questions to the lesson and have students use them to investigate a concept or to use questions to deepen their knowledge. I have also found it interesting how facts and concepts play a different role than what I am used to in the classroom, leading students to be more engaged in the learning process. Finally, I have a newfound understanding of what makes an excellent source to use in class. My thoughts on inquiry-based learning have not changed since the last post, but I have a deeper understanding of how to use it in the classroom. The question I have is how to make inquiry-based learning engaging and fun for all students and how to reach the hard-to-reach students.

As the third week of the class ends, I have learned some new things about inquiry-based learning. I have gained unique insight into how to set students up for success in a student-driven lesson effectively and how to push them using questions to understand the material better. What changed the most for me was setting the classroom up for success with the classroom essentials. I had a good set-up for teaching inquiry-based learning, but with this new knowledge, I will be more successful with this teaching style. The burning question for me is how can you encourage students that do not want to do the work to participate in class, and how can we encourage them to at least try?

After the first week of learning about inquiry-based learning, I discovered that what I am doing in the classroom is close to what was talked about in this unit. This insight leads me to learn more about how I can allow my students to explore and learn more independently than from me teaching it to them directly. Now there was a change in my mindset; guiding students differs from teaching them. I used to think that the way I was setting up my class was guiding my students to find the answers on their own, but in reality, I was still teaching them directly. Using the information I learned this week, I will have the students explore more and have me play a passive role in their learning. A burning question I still have after this week is how this will look for more complicated subjects I teach that involve a lot of math. For these lessons and subjects having students try and figure out what to do can be confusing and cause hardships and misunderstandings, so I am curious about how to p...