End of Days

We are approaching our last Teaching Science class.  It is totally bittersweet!

I have loved getting to know everyone, sharing our ideas, and (re)discovering the inquiry process (deja vu, all over again)!

I especially loved our bloggurtunity!  I will most definitely continue blogging, but probably not at such a fast rate (winky face).

Tonight we did an awesome Inquiry Process involving Bubblegum and Statistics.  We chomped on gum, blew some bubbles, and averaged the diameters in order to determine which of the three gums blew the largest bubble!  Bubble Yum just barely won.

The best part of it all was the giggles.  We were doing math, creating an experiment, controlling variables, measuring outcomes, asking questions, inferring answers, and none of it was hard or boring work!  We had a blast!

This made it completely apparent to me that the inquiry process and the scientific method don't have to be dry or intimidating activities; they can be totally fun and enjoyable!  I think it is important to give your students the freedom to choose their own questions and design their own experiment parameters-- it makes it more meaningful and memorable.

As we venture out to our summers and our future classrooms, continue thinking of the inquiry process, and make those important, real world connections.  As we learned from this bloggurtunity, just about anything we see or experience can become inspiration for a writing exercise, or even an inquiry activity!

Thank you all for your thoughts, your input, and our informative discussions.  I have truly enjoyed every minute of it!