What is in the Bag?

    During class today, Dr. Smirnova, showed us a checkered pattern bag and wanted everyone in the class to hypothesize what was inside the bag. She allowed each student in the class to hold the bag 5 counts to gather as much information as they can. When the bag reached me during class, I shook, squeezed, and felt the bag to try to guess what was inside. I thought the bag might have a dog toy in it because it felt soft, yet squeaked when I squeezed it, but then it was also hard and rattled so I was unsure what was really in the bag. After everyone in the class had their five seconds with the bag, Dr. Smirnova wanted to categorize all of our ideas. The class suggested that the bag might contain multiple items so we made five groups: dog toys, rattles, solid items/rocks, soft items/balls, and children toys. After this activity, Dr. Smirnova wanted us to really focus on what a hypothesis exactly was. I have learned that a hypothesis is not just a guess, not even an educated guess, but it is a tentative explanation. It is so important to teach students to hypothesize because it teaches students the process of inquiry. If the hypothesis is valid, then such and such should happen and be observed as a result of some actions to test the hypothesis. It is important for students to understand this concept because it will follow them throughout their academic career.

      Here is the big question, why do teachers need inquiry to teach science? In my opinion, it is because science is not a direct answer. Science explores and with new technology we go deeper and deeper to discover things. The principle in science is uncertainty. Scientific knowledge is fundamentally uncertain, science is uncertain because it is human activity and we are always changing. This is why it is so important for teachers to ask students why and encourage them to explore. We want our future students to investigate and want to learn more about science on their own. As future educators it is important to implement wonder into students. Science is such an interesting topic because there is so much unknown and so much to explore. 

     I thought the sensory bag activity during class was a great way to engage everyone in the room into the lesson. This is definitely something I would want to do with a future class because it was a fun way to get involved and it was intriguing! I want to find unique ways to engage my future students because I want everyone to be excited to learn something new. I know that sometimes it could be difficult to get all students excited about science but it truly is so interesting so I would like to change that! I am so excited to teach science to my future classes because I want to teach students how to wonder, inquire, and explore!