Hello there,
I loved all the ideas for inquiry based teaching in this module; the stolen jellies, push and pull, soaking up a spill lesson; they all depicted great teaching and learning based on inquiry based teaching. To teach a floating and sinking lesson, which I have peviously done with first and second class, I would entice and engage the children in more before the lessons with ‘I wonder’ comments and ‘What if’ etc. I would engage the children more through means of prompting, wondering and exploring. We would then investigate different materials for floating and sinking such as big items, small items, all filled items, dense items, long, short, heavy, light items etc. I would get the children to predict what they think would float and sink, would the amount of water have an impact on whether an item floated or sank etc., could an item float at first and then sink or vice versa. After this we would conduct the investigation in groups and interpret the data then. As a whole class then, we would discuss our findings and go on to discuss why arm bands, life jackets, life buoys etc all stay afloat. I would record a personal reflection then myself afterwards on what part of the lesson went well and what could be improved on the next time.