Teaching Inquiry to Fourth Graders

Today was my second day of teaching with my group but this time we taught an inquiry lesson. We started off the lesson with a review on the plant organelles. We began by asking the students if they could remember any of the organelles and it's functions. I was very surprised by the students responses. Their responses really showed us how much they learned from our lesson. After the review we explained that they will have to write a letter to an alien about what life is like on earth using all the information they just learned about Botany and the organelles. In our lesson we provided the students with construction paper and we cut out all the different organelles for the students so that they could make their very own plant cell. Each table had a different riddle for the students so that they could guess what the organelle was. For example "I'm full of holes, flexible and thin, I control what gets out, as well as what comes in." "Who am I?" My group and I rotated around each table and worked together very well during this lesson. It was fun to see the students try and guess the riddle. This is definitely an activity that I would like to implement into my future classroom. After the students worked on the riddles they then had to write a story to an alien to show him how life on earth works using the 9 organelles that they just learned about. This was such a great experience, and I can't wait to learn more about teaching science!