My adjusted inquiry question is: How can STEM and ADST challenges be used to increase student engagement and excitement in learning science? 

I taught a lot of science in my 391 practicum – the entire grade 2 water cycle unit, along with a few one-off lessons – and I definitely noticed that students were more engaged in the learning when we were doing hands-on ADST activities rather than worksheets or any more traditional learning.  Even those students who “didn’t like science” or found that “the water cycle is so boring.  Can’t we learn about dinosaurs?” were engaged and excited to make tools or models that helped them learn. 

The same can be said about the STEM challenges I had the class do.  On one day, I paired up my students and had them do an egg drop challenge, and on a different day, we partnered up with their cohort class (grade 3) and in groups of four, the students were given a material – popsicle sticks, Q-tips, or straws – and were tasked with building a house for the Three Little Pigs that could withstand the Big Bad Blow Dryer.  All the students from both classes were beyond engaged in both these challenges, and were more than excited to try different strategies and collaborate with their groups to make their inventions work.

In Bonnie’s EDUC 398 class, she gave us so many examples and strategies on how to incorporate ADST into our science and math lessons.  I will definitely be using what I’ve learned with her in my own practice.  Bonnie has also told us that she can be a resource if we need one, and that all we need to do is email her with a “Hey, I’m teaching X.  Do you have any suggestions on ADST activities I could use?”  Being able to ask her for suggestions and opinions will be of great help if I’m running a blank on exactly how I could incorporate ADST into a specific lesson.

I think that involving ADST in science lessons and giving students regular STEM-related challenges that make them think outside the box and hone all kinds of important skills from problem solving to teamwork to innovation will make students excited to learn science and increase their likelihood of taking more science classes in high school or even university.  Obviously this would take years to observe and is not something I can look at over the course of my practicum experience, but I definitely think that this would lead to more science engagement and excitement in students in the short term as well.

I have chosen the Transformative Inquiry strategy for my inquiry approach.  I chose this strategy mostly because, out of the three strategies we were given, it was the only one I could figure out what actually went into it from the resources given.  The other two strategies sounded interesting, but when there is no actual instructions or a list of these are the components you have to do in order to use Spiral Inquiry, for example, it’s really difficult to figure out whether a strategy will actually fit what you want to do.

Transformative Inquiry involves looking deeper into issues you care about.  Science fits that category for me, as I have always loved learning deeper about any kind of science I could get my hands on.  Transformative Inquiry also involves gathering evidence from all of inquiry partners, classroom observations, self study, and academic literature, and I believe that it is possible for me to address all these areas within my inquiry into this question.

My inquiry partners would be my triad (both Steven and Jacob are in secondary, so it will be interesting to see if their opinions and observations would differ than my own in elementary), some of my elementary TC peers (this would allow me to get other opinions and observations from those working in other elementary schools and/or grades), and my coaching teacher (both their past experiences and their input on my lessons). 

My classroom observations are pretty straight forward, as this would include what I observe in my classroom, as well as what I’ve observed in past classrooms I’ve been in.

My self study is also fairly straight forward.  This step involves looking into my personal experience with the topic and why I’m passionate about it.

And finally academic literature, which I believe would be the most intensive part of this inquiry process, would involve looking into studies and papers done on the topic of ADST, STEM, and science engagement.

Overall, I think the Transformative Inquiry approach should work for my inquiry question.

My goals for Block 3 are:

  • Make STEM challenges a more common occurrence in my 490 practicum.  I’m thinking this could look like a weekly occurrence (i.e., every Friday afternoon, or something like that), and once I get my placement and know what grade I’ll be working with, I could find challenges that relate to the curriculum I’m teaching or that they’ve learned in this grade.
  • Be better and more consistent at classroom management.  While this doesn’t relate to my inquiry question, this was the biggest thing I had to work on coming out of my last practicum.  I need to assert myself more and make my expectations for behaviour while I’m teaching better known.  I also need to be better at noticing when single students are getting out of hand, and be able to better address those students and what they need to do before rejoining the class and the lesson.  I was getting better over the course of my 391 practicum, but I definitely could still be better and need more practice overall.