Inquiry Celebration at Lakeview Reflection

      At the Lakeview Inquiry Celebration, I was unfortunately not afforded the opportunity to sit in on specific social studies seminars. Instead, I was able to sit in on several math seminars. However, this is not to say that the presentations were not valuable. On the contrary, I found the information presented in these seminars to be a formative experience in designing inquiry projects.

      The most interesting, albeit possibly controversial seminar I attended was one on working with students to reinforce basic math skills that might have been lost or never learned. The presenter pointed out that many students are attempting to do math without a firm grasp on the basics – addition, multiplication, division, and subtraction. The presenter decided to use timed drill-and-practice assessments to hone these skills with accuracy, precision, and speed.

      The questions I had based on this action research presentation revolved around the use of the timed tests. Since they were 1 minute, 40 question tests, I desired to know how many completed them or came close in that time frame (answer: zero; highest score was ~32). Also, I was curious about the implications of such timed tests. I remember in elementary school, I really dreaded such things. It was not that I was particularly bad at these skills – I was simply a little slower. I think that timed assessments can be damaging to the confidence to students who work more slowly. Basically, my issue with these sorts of assessments is that there is little differentiation. However, I do acknowledge that there is indeed a problem in which middle school students do lack these basic math skills. Thus, I thought the presentation was strong on the whole.

      The key things that I learned from this inquiry were mainly about the actual structure and creation of the research methodology and questions. First, it became increasingly clear that one should choose a topic which suits your interests. There was a marked difference in the demeanor of the interns who used topics that they were clearly passionate about. Along with that is the idea that one should design inquiry projects fit your context. The presentations I watched all involved research questions that formed organically from the issues or phenomena observed in their respective classrooms.

     Making one's inquiry public is an excellent decision. Research should always be shared with future researchers, as they could expand on your inquiry in order to develop solutions to 21st century problems. Also, informing others of inquiry can help teachers learn about effective strategies for making classrooms excellent places to learn.