Slow-motion NSTA13 Round-Up

Via the NSTA's New Teacher Academy*, I had the opportunity to attend a Professional Development Institute Class. These were special, one-day, all-day sessions on a number of subjects. I chose Inquiring Into Inquiry: Creating an Inquiry-Based Classroom. This is a topic in which I am fully vested because I feel completely incompetent (scared, even) of letting my students take control. 

But here's the thing. You know that party that you're so excited to attend, it's going to be just the BEST time E-vah. And then you go and it's just not - not what you expected, not what you wanted, maybe even not what you were told it was going to be? Well, that was this PDI. It was a let-down. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't actively bad. It just wasn't what I wanted - needed - it to be. It was the type of thing that by the end of the conference, three-plus days later I could barely recall anything but blah.

Intervention

This was about to violate  "Keri's Theory of PD" -- "anything learned from PD makes it a good PD". And that could not be allowed to happen. Into the breach stepped Nick (Last name unknown), another NTA Fellow. He had shown himself to be a remarkably upbeat type, so I asked him what he got out of that class. His answer dispelled the Charlie Brown cloud that had been hanging over my head regarding the entire thing. So here is what I learned from PDI-8:

1. There is no one "look" of inquiry. It can involve text/article readings just as much as it involves labs. (Thanks, Nick!)
2. I now have a great list of sentence stems to offer my students so that they can beging to "think like a scientist". I plan to combine this with a tip from another PD and create a "word wall" that we can point to as we develop a more formal register.
3. Not so much learned as met. By attending this pre-conference even, I made connections that really helped for the remainder of the conference and . As a result, I felt so much more comfortable and got more our of the remainder of the conference because we were able to share/compare our experiences. 

Upcoming: Electric House Project and more reflections on NSTA

Cool find: Scroll down until you see the headphones. What a great idea!

*New Teacher Academy is organized by NSTA and sponsored by many other companies including DOW (my sponsor). If you are in your first five years of teaching science, I highly recommend applying for this program. It is a year-long program that provides an online mentoring community, in-depth explorations of topics that help you reflect and improve on teaching, webinars that cover topics from classroom management to lab safety to inquiry to whatever and finally, the program sends its fellows to the annual NSTA conference.