Creating a classroom that is based around inquiry-based learning is something that I will be trying to focus on during my practicum and in the future as well. Although the BC ministry of education created curriculum has several different prescribed learning outcomes (PLOs) that the students must meet, the way that each curriculum is laid out allows room for the students explore their different areas of interest.

Through effective planning I hope to be able to make different sorts of assessments that will give students the opportunity to really build on their interests in biology and science, and become actively engaged in their learning. I have learned from my own experience that passively receiving information through lecture-style learning is not effective, and that being genuinely interested in the course content is what makes different things stick in our heads. This is why rather than just feeding information to students, I want to focus on teaching them the skills required to help them learn. I think that my own biggest challenge will be thinking of different ways to link the PLOs to interesting projects that the students will be excited to work on.

Focus on Inquiry sets out the process of inquiry-based learning as:

1. Planning

2. Retrieving

3. Processing

4. Creating

5. Sharing

6 Evaluating

Through each of these six steps, students are actively involved in learning what they want to. Although inquiry-based learning focuses on the role of the student, there are many different ways that the teacher can help the student along in the process.