Inquiry-based Learning

Inquiry-based Learning

1. Example steps to an inquiry

   • Spark interest (i.e a narrative book)
     • Oral Discussion
       • Invite students to jot down or sketch what they know. (Gives us as an educator a baseline of their understanding)
         • Work in small groups share info gathered (Our job is to see patterns)
           • Encourage children to make some claims about important components
             • (Educator job- See the big ideas/curriculum expectations/potential assessment)
               • Let the children make connections (i.e. books/videos) I provide explicit instruction, aid in exercising critical thinking skills
                 • Redo initial exercise, review growth in understanding

2. Students questions/ideas/observations at the center of the learning experience

   • Pedagogical mindset
   • Inquiry Stance-Combines the best approaches to instruction
     • Explicit instruction
     • Small-group and guided learning
     • Build on students interests and ideas
     • Moving students forward in their paths of intellectual curiosity and understanding
   • Education at its best

3. Educators play an active role

   • Knowing when to introduce students to ideas that will move them forward in their inquiry
   • Aid children to move from wonder to enacted learning
   • Be repsonsive to students learning needs
   • Establish a culture
   • Educators as a provocateur
     • Model how to contribute and extend ideas
     • Model how to question and how to carry out an investigation-especially at the beginning of the year
     • Find creative ways to introduce ideas/subject matter
     • Educators will intervene recognize contributions made from ind./whole class. Aid students to contribute in new ways.
     • Build on questions to cause more wonder
   • Integrating curriculum
     • Focus on Big Ideas and not specific expectations from the curriculum
     • Students will develop skills and touch on many subject areas.
     • Connect student questions to the big ideas
     • Assessment for learning ind./class
   • Engage students in learning
     • Gather class- Knowledge building discussions
     • Mini lessons
     • Revisit initial theories
     • Continually assess learning and make it visible
     • Reflect with students and use guiding questions

4. Educators and Students

   • Share the responsibility for learning
   • Co-author the learning experience
   • Mutual responsibility for planning
   • Equal partner role
   • Spark curiosity

5. Students

   • Involves open ended investigations into a question or problem
   • Evidence-based reasoning
   • Creative problem solving
   • Problem finding
   • Play an equal partner role
     • Leads to greater involvement,motivation , a sense of responsibility and engagement
     • Better able to evaluate and reflect on learning when they are involved from start to finish
     • Students begin to experience learning as an ongoing process and not an end point
   • Types of student contributions
     • Building on
     • Making connections
     • Asking questions
     • Proposing theories
     • Declarative statements
     • Paraphrasing/clarifying/synthesizing

6. Guiding Principles

   • Don't wait for the perfect question
     • Can be simple/ spark curiosity
     • Can be spontaneous questions
     • Genuine curiosity- Shared experience
     • Teacher initiated
   • Place ideas at the center
     • Culture to express ideas, respectfully challenge, test others's ideas
     • questions need time to germinate
     • ideas can be expressed in many forms
   • Work toward a common goal of understanding
     • Check in and discuss the big ideas of the subject/investigation/inquiry at hand
   • Don't let go of the class
     • Students are capable of sophisticated thinking and express genuine interest
     • Educators can introduce ideas that do not emerge spontaneously
   • Remain faithful to the student's line of inquiry
     • Help students overcome obstacles, extend their understanding
     • Impromptu mini lessons, revisit a former concept/idea, make certain lines of thought explicit, introduce new problems and questions
   • Teach directly on a need to know basis
     • Not all learning opp. call for an inquiry approach
     • Can be teacher- directed view to help students stay focused