Getting Started with Inquiry
Course
Meat & EQs [8:39]
The recipe for inquiry begins with curriculum content. After that comes the essential question that will compel student discovery.
And then, what question? Then you have to say, "All right, what essential question can I ask to compel student discovery, so that they can manipulate that content area?" Those essential questions usually begin with how, why, what if, so what, does, if, those higher level thought provoking words, not the what or when, not the concrete, because that's answered with a fact. You have to use the facts to answer the higher level. So, those essential questions or those guiding questions or those umbrella questions, the big question in an inquiry-based learning adventure, begin usually with how, why, what if, so what, does, if, something like that. And then, we always say insert a pronoun if you can.
We've included one of the learning handouts for this lesson. It has a template that'll help you brainstorm your essential question. We call an essential question brainstormer. You may want to look at that now, just to see where we're going. When we're working with teachers and librarians, we say, "Pick a content area, now fill in the blank, fill in this template, in order to build your essential question." Not that you'll use every point that you put on the template, but it helps you wrap your head around where you're going. When you travel on the Internet superhighway, you don't want the scenic tour, you want to know where your destination is. When you and a teacher can identify what the destination is, what do you want them to learn and wrap their head around? It helps. So, let's give you an example. Let's look at Manifest Destiny Westward Expansion for an example. It used to be covered and the vocabulary of the discipline would be given out, the kids would have to look up the words and understand the words, or the teacher would go through the words.
Basically, in an inquiry-based model, you wouldn't do that. You would ask any essential question. If you were living in the 1800s, would you have gone West, young man? Now, we know the vocabulary discipline might include Conestoga, Westward Expansions, Savage, Trail of Tears, the Annexation of Texas if this was a higher level, the Indian Removal Act possibly, the Transcontinental Railroad, President Jackson, President Taft, Provisions, Lewis and Clark, and really it depends upon your grade level whether you're talking fourth grade, sixth grade or tenth grade, you know what content or what vocabulary discipline you want. So, you want to equip them with that bookmark and you say, "These are the words that you're going to come across, you're going to research, that you're going to find in your research," and we expect them to use those when we have our knowledge product at the end, our discussion and debate, or we're going to have a family meeting and we're going to decide whether we're going to go West, young man.
Now, if I were brainstorming with a teacher, I would say, "What do you really want the students to know at the end of the road?" and they probably would say, "What's the moral of the story?" Well, I want them to know that going West was not just digging for gold or getting a homesteading, that it had a big promise, but there was also the possibility of big peril. They wanted both sides of the equation. So, that's why we ask that question, "Would you have gone West?" because it compels the students to really look at both sides of the issue. Any cue could be similar, ask, "How does the current Sun Belt Migration Brain Drain compare to the Westward Expansion of the 1800s?" That would be more at the high school level. Thematically, with the Social Studies curriculum changes going to thematic, it wouldn't necessarily be that you're just teaching Westward Expansion or Manifest Destiny. The higher you get, the more they want you to embrace together thematically.
So, you might say, "What's up with all the movement of people during the 1800s?" So that they would look at immigration and Westward Expansion, The City Bulge, the Trail of Tears, they have to identify all these experiences where there was moving of people, and we know they were coming from Europe. We knew that the Industrial Revolution was changing the face of the East Coast, the demographics of the East Coast. So, we want students to address it thematically. So then you'd come up with essential questions that would embrace that and a question such as, "How does the modern day Sun Belt Migration compare to the Westward Expansion of the 1800s?" Or you come up with other compelling questions that the students really, in order to be able to answer, would have to uncover and discover that meaning. So, that's an example of what it might look like.
Now, let me say to answer that essential question, kids usually have to do what we call-- what really an evidence-based claim, that's what they're calling these investigations in the classroom, building an evidence-based claim. And often it's just they're reading it in a close reading activity and they use one or two close reading pieces. Well, guess what? That's actually straightjacketing the students' brain. How much better is it just to give them one piece, build the background information and then asking the inquiry essential question and get them to come to the library and dig deeper than just maybe one close reading piece, two or three that the teachers predefine in the classroom. So, this is a way you can connect to the classroom for learning and the teachers can actually embrace the short research assignments. Rather than just a big research assignment, they can couple a close reading activity in their classroom with a short inquiry-based research.
So, that's one way for you to build connections through inquiry. That's how it would look just for one content discipline. We're going to go on in the next lesson and give you many different options or many different views of what it looks like, but basically you just look at that time to wonder and connect to prior learning, you give the kids an opportunity to investigate and gather their evidence, so that they can support their evidence-based claim and that, basically during an investigation stage, is when you teach information literacy principles. When they gathered all their information they have to synthesize it. How can I make sense of what I've found? You have to help them, you and the teachers may have to help them, or they can talk collaboratively and synthesize in small groups, because brain research shows that those who cannot think, learn to think by actually seeing thinking models. So, synthesis, that synthesis stage is so important, and teachers that are just ask kids to find facts are really straightjacketing their brain and not giving them the opportunity to think outside the box, or synthesize the material into deeper meaning.
And then, of course, your express stage, how can we ask the students to demonstrate that knowledge? In the Manifest Destiny we said, "Hey, we're going to have a family meeting and we're going to discuss are we going to move West." But the express stage really often includes technology, often includes a social element or you're writing. Writing is easy if they've manipulated the content so much, they know it so well that writing actually becomes a very easy thing. And that's where, once again, you expect the vocabulary discipline to be used knowingly. So, there you go. That's a little profile of inquiry and I will take questions from you, if you have any.
Inquiry requires curricular content and an expectation for the enduring understanding(s) that students will attain. From those elements, an essential question guides the learning. Inquiry-based learning connects big themes through essential questions, rather than placing content into silos, with fact-level retention. In this lesson, the movement of people during various times in American history is examined as an example.
Using the same topic that you explored in Lesson 3 with the Question Stems exercise, build some possible Essential Questions using the brainstorming document, "What's an Essential Question (EQ)?" found in the Resources below.
MLA Citation
Morris, Rebecca J. "Getting Started with Inquiry: Developing Essential Questions." School Library Connection, November 2024, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1988318?learningModuleId=1988313&topicCenterId=2247902.
Entry ID: 2122838
Additional Resources
About the Author
MLA Citation
Jaeger, Paige. "Getting Started with Inquiry. Meat & EQs [8:39]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, November 2015, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1988318?learningModuleId=1988313&topicCenterId=2247902.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1988318?learningModuleId=1988313&topicCenterId=2247902
Entry ID: 1988318