Name MonicaCamacho

Submitted on 9/21/2005 4:09:18 PM

Topic: LC2

 Lee,C. A. (2003). A Learning Cycle Inquiry into Plant Nutrition. The American Biology Teacher, 65, 136-141.

Summary

This article is about the author Cherin Lee, taking the reader through the learning cycle steps of a Plant Nutrition lesson on Brassica rapa. The lesson is designed as a guided inquiry but can be modified as a structured inquiry or "posed" as an open-ended inquiry. It first gives the reader the approaches necessary to make the inquiry lesson effective by telling the reader to make sure to give a motivational approach the asks questions to the student and then have the student use their own ideas and apply it to the lesson. The author likes for an inquiry to be in a cooperative setting for further exploration and a concrete assessment strategy. Then, the lesson is formed and materials are provided in the article. The article also gives background information that is very helpful for the Teacher. The lesson is introduced with a question for the students to ponder that facilitates active thinking. Next, is exploration. The experiment is designed telling the reader to either have it done in groups or individually making sure that brainstorming strategies are enforces and all the variables are accounted for. Further on is the experiment part, which gives student the chance to decide which variable to take. Next, the data is collected. This lesson will last about a month of investigations and should be both quantitative and qualitative. It also, is stated that a presentation should be done to show the work of the students. Further, the article also wants students to look over data and draw conclusions having the Teacher have a class discussion on the findings of Plant Nutrition.

Reaction

Overall, I feel that reading just this one article gave me an ideal way of teaching a Science class using the learning cycle. I liked that the article justified reasons as to why it is important to have a presentation at the end of the lesson and also having a group discussion. Compared to the last article I read, this one serves better justice. It gives the Teacher guided instruction of how to implement the learning cycle into the lesson on Plant Nutrition. I loved that it gave materials to use and background information for the Teacher. I feel this approach to the learning cycle was more effective in that by allowing students to test different variables depending on the groups they are in and having them present their work in a qualitative and quantitative format allows the student to fully understand how to critically think in a higher level.