Group+Inquiry+Page

Vinny: (4) I feel Kiriaki's activity is a great lesson that involves student inquiry. This project involves students to research, find opinions from others via the internet and making conclusions based on their own work. After thinking back to the 1600's and placing themselves in another century, the students are asked to do research about the time period, including geography and other factors that effect life back in that time period. This activity allows the students be creative and use resources to validate their decisions, thinking beyond the constraints of the classroom. The activity involves much independent and dependent work, another factor of inquiry based learning. Overall, Kiriaki's activity has many qualities and factors that relate back to inquiry based learning.

(5) I feel Vinny's activity lacks many of the inquiry learning factors. There is some research involved, but a lack of creativity and ability to branch out. Inquiry is about thinking creatively and collect opinions through one's own sources. The baseball activity gives the students the link, guiding them where they should research and what questions to answer. This lacks main points of inquiry learning, as the activity fails to require higher-level thinking. Baseball, which is a real-life situation fro statistics, has cut and dry facts and numbers. There is a lack of opinions or varying facts. This can effect one's ability to think at a higher-level in an inquiry activity. Overall, this activity is has some main points about inquiry, but lacks to include all.

(6) The best rubric for evaluating inquiry-based learning activities would be Tim's. I feel Tim has covered the main points about inquiry. His rubric evaluates a students ability to investigate a subject or topic, create new knowledge about it,question and present the material. This covers all the bases when it comes to inquiry based learning. One's ability to achieve all of these points can validate their success when completing this complex lesson. FOr example, Kiriaki's activity calls for each student to research and create new knowledge through investigating, and to present the material to the class through a written assignment and a presentation. Tim's rubric would be a great guideline for grading an assignment such as Kiriaki's.

**Tim:**


 * (4) I agree with Vinny in the sense that Kiriaki's activity is the most inquiry based out of the 3. Her activity involes all of the components from my definiton that deems something truly inquiry based. The actitvity invovles students conducting research to decide which of the 13 colonies they would settle in. Some of the factors students have to consider are foreign concepts because they didn't live back in the 1600s. So, when considering which of the colonies to settle in students are using many of the components of inquiry based learning and may not even be aware of it. In conducting this research, students are using higher level thinking (putting themselves in the 1600s), they are also** **investigating the many attributes of each colony, they also are asking questions of their teachers and possibly parents about information they couldn't find an answer for on the internet or textbook, and lastly they are generating new knowledge because chances are this knowldge they are gaining on the colonies was foregin before engaging in this project.**


 * (5) I think that my and Vinny's activity didn't invovle all of the aspects of inquiry based learning. They invovled some of the aspects of the concept but lacked the most important parts in my opinion. For example, in my activity, I think it lacks the higher level thinking and creative aspect of inquiry. All frogs have the same body parts. As a result, students engaged in this activity do not have to engage in higher level thinking because they don't have to investigate multiple sources to create new knowledge to complete this activity. Most importantly, it lacks the creative aspect of inquiry. All frogs inhibit the same body parts so there is no need for students to get excitied about a creative aspect in this activity. In the same sense, I think Vinny's activity lacks the creative sense because statistics are very dry, as he stated in his explanation. Where my and Vinny's activities lack the creative and higher level thinking aspects of inquiry, it is evident in Kiriaki's activity. I can totally get excited about putting myself in the mindset about which colony I want to settle in (creative) and you definatly have to use some higher level thinking in deciding which colony is the best fit for you.

(6) I think that my rubric is the best one to evaluate Kiriaki's activity. As Vinny stated, Kiraki's activity calls for students to investigate the attributes of each colony, to ask questions of your teachers if a concept doesn't make any sense, to use higher level thinking to put themselves in the mindset of what it was like to live in the 1600s and lastly this activity involves the creation of new knowledge because it invovles a written presentation of what you researched. My rubric evaluates all of these aspects so as a result I think mine is the best one to evaluate Kiriaki's activity.**

Kiriaki 4. I also agree with Vinny and Tim that the activity I found was the most inquiry-based of the three. It asks students to research a period of time, which is unfamiliar to them, and to answer open-ended questions based on their research; no one answer is correct for this activity, however their final product cannot be completed without the appropriate research to support their opinion.

5. Although it is a very motivating and fun activity to do, I didn’t feel that the activity Vinny found was inquiry-based. It asked for the students to find out if there was a correlation between baseball-player payroll and the chance of winning the World Series, of which is a closed-ended question; the answer is either yes or no. As for Tim’s activity, again it is a very exciting activity to do, however it does not take the knowledge learned from the activity, to the next level; i.e. it serves as a good review of the parts of a frog, which is based on memorizing facts, and then restating them to reconfigure the frog.

6. Both Tim’s and Vinny’s rubrics are best at assessing inquiry based learning activities. They both have very similar criteria, of which capture the essence of what inquiry is; especially with the criteria “ **Students solve problems through asking questions about acquired information,” (Vinny’s Rubric) ****which mine was lacking. **