Hilary Dobyns

EDUC 424
Journal 3
02/05/2015
On Tuesday Mary presented her lesson and we got to use both of our
hats during the lesson. Mary presented a lesson that challenged our
measurement ability but was also extremely inquiry based. She was very
thorough and asked us a lot of questions. I thought that this activity was a
great one because she could even throw math in and have a math and
science lesson. We used water and salt to see how much water we could get
in the cup without it overflowing, but then we had to make a guess about
how much salt we could get into the cup before the water overflowed and hit
the metal pan. I think that Mary did a great job with asking questions and
keeping everyone engaged. We got to use both of our hats because we saw
how we were engaged as the students but we also got to see the types of
questions that Mary asked as the teacher and the different inquiry based
examples and questions she used. I think that I used my student hat more
than my teacher hat during this demonstration, but I feel that this will help
me if I ever use this lesson because I will be able to relate to my students
and how they will be thinking throughout the experiment.
On Thursday Haley did her inquiry lesson. I absolutely loved being a
student during this lesson. This would be a great lesson for fourth graders,
which was the grade Haley focused on. She did a great job of asking
questions and having us answer the questions. I used my teacher hat more
during this lesson though because I really saw how I could use this lesson in

my future classroom but also how to ask questions that would make my
students think critically and really have to delve into what they are learning
to answer the questions. After Haley presented her lesson to us, Dr. McKenzie
went over concept maps and social constructivism. I thought that the
concept mapping that we went over was a very cool way to connect ideas
and concepts for any age group or grade level. I think that I could use this at
any grade level. The higher grades would use a more in depth concept map
and would be expected to use more critical thinking when putting their
concept map together. At younger levels we could start by introducing the
idea of a concept map and then have them come up with the headings and
then put the connections together as a class. I also think that by learning
about social construction we can see how we learn through outer speech and
inner speech. We learned that most of our learning happens during the inner
speech phase. This was a surprise to me because I thought we would learn
through talking to others and having conversations about what we are
learning. This week in science class I learned a lot about inquiry and even
more about how we learn and when learning takes place.