Getting Started with Inquiry
Course
What Does This Look Like? [7:29]
The more models you see that demonstrate using inquiry, the better you can wrap your head around what inquiry is all about. This lesson provides several examples.
This teacher, he actually says, "Find the state bird and the state flower, and the state animal" or whatever the list of facts is. It's very fact -- or in report. If you have that model going on in your building, the first step towards inquiry, repackaging is to say to the teacher, "What do you want them to do with all those facts?" So an essential question that might work with that is, we often give each kid a little a penny and we say, "What's on this penny?" And they start looking and they eventually come to E pluribus unum. We say, "What does that mean?" and you begin to say, "Well it means one for all and all for one."
So, our central question is actually, very easily put as, "How are we mutually interdependent?" Now believe it or not, an elementary school child can wrap their head around that question. Once they've manipulated that, maybe you get to the point where, you say, "Well, let's look at it in term of exports and imports." "What is your state export?" "What is the state import?" "What do you grow that you or what do you don't grow?" "What do you need?" "What do you have to offer?" And you build this understanding of how we are, one for all and all for one. And it all started with a little penny. Now what's the connection - the real world connection? To life, money, they'd love money, or that they get to talk about their state, notice the insertion of a pronoun. How is your state a vital part of the whole?
All right, how about another one? How about the country report, that's another ubiquitous thing that's done from California to Delaware. The country report can easily become -- how are we globally interdependent? There was a lot of talk years ago about being in a flat world. Well, we really are, we're in a flat world. So how are we globally interdependent? Not just these travel brochures that people create about their country, we've all did country reports when we were young. And I can remember nothing about Ethiopia, the country that I did. But I do believe that when students really investigate the country to answer a question, they'll get to the main point.
So, we have an example for you. If you were the country's ambassador to the UN, for what reasons would you plead for money? Or how does your country need to improve to compete in a global world? Or you could say, what America's Bill of Rights fit into your country? Or how would your life have to change, to live in this country? So, those are four or five questions that can replace the country report. Each one of those questions to answer, they have to uncover and discover what their country is all about, to be able to build an evidence based claim or to be able to talk knowingly and intelligently about their country and plead for funding.
All right. Let's look at another one. Let's look at chemistry. Simple question. How did your chemical element change the world? It's just an opportunity for even an 8th grade level or 11th grade level, where chemistry is usually taught to suddenly insert a research requirement. Because why do we study chemistry? Really to change the world, we all know that. Of anything, probably chemical elements have changed the world, , more than many things. There's a great book, Napoleon's Buttons, and that was all about, history of the world through the chemical elements, very interesting. Or The Disappearing Spoon is another, ELA nonfiction book that could be collaboratively read, alongside chemical, in the 11th grade chemistry unit, where they actually investigate the elements and how they really did change the worlds. Both of them could be jigsawed, a chapter here or a chapter there or an element here or an element there. The students may not have to read the whole book to gather that but can share their knowledge.
So let's look at another one. How about Social Studies? A Social Studies example would be similar to what we mentioned earlier. How does the Bill of Rights and the amendments tell our country's historical story. When you look at that it's -- there are so many Social Studies questions. We mentioned earlier too, if you were to build a democracy wall of fame, who would be on it and why? Build an evidence based claim for your nominations, work collaboratively to point people, advocate for those nominations. Build the wall and be prepared to take people on a guided tour.
If you said that for your wall of democracy, students know right up front what you are expecting them to do at a knowledge product, they know, wow, what kind of information they are digging. But they don't know anything about democracy. So, I have to equip them with the knowledge of the discipline, I mean, the vocabulary of the discipline. And they can easily do that. But to see how I have transferred the learning responsibility to the student, who owns that product, the students. The teachers don't own that content, the students will. So, it's a very successful model, for really getting to engage students.
How about Susan B. Anthony or Jefferson, Crispus Attucks, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lewis Tappan. On there with some ideas, maybe I pull one of those out and say, "Hey, you've never heard a Lewis Tappan. You want to know why I would nominate him and then I model why I would nominate Lewis Tappan to be on the wall of fame, and what an abolitionist he was. I would model that. So that they have seen upfront, my thinking and they can replicate it.
We talked earlier about some health examples. How can we lengthen our life? By our daily decisions. Here's another with daily decision one, how about a Science? How big is your carbon footprint? There it is -- the insertion of the pronoun. With the pronoun in there, it's all about them, it's not about your content area. Okay. Biographies. Biographies are the most scammed assignments on the face of the planet. But if you modify those and make it an inquiry based investigation, you start asking the question, that is not necessarily answerable on Google. In other words, what footprints did you personally leave behind? Should they be on a wall of fame or wall of shame? How will history remember your person and why? Or what was your person's path, to fame or notoriety?
So, those were half a dozen, dozen examples of how inquiry is a subtle change, but it's a big change. It's taking the same content that I've been doing and repackaging it, to be student centered.
Inquiry repackages existing content into engaging, student-centered experiences. This lesson explains several examples of inquiry across grade levels, using familiar topics like the state report, country report, and study of chemical elements. One strategy for getting students invested in their inquiry is to insert the pronoun "you" into a topic, such as the science question, "how big is your carbon footprint?"
Follow the lesson's suggestion to insert "you" into research questions as a way to engage students and make topics more relevant to them. Select a few topics from one grade level, or one each from some/all of the grade levels you teach.
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MLA Citation
Morris, Rebecca J. "Getting Started with Inquiry: Placing 'You' in Inquiry." School Library Connection, November 2024, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1988319?learningModuleId=1988313&topicCenterId=2247902.
Entry ID: 2122839
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About the Author
MLA Citation
Jaeger, Paige. "Getting Started with Inquiry. What Does This Look Like? [7:29]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, November 2015, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1988319?learningModuleId=1988313&topicCenterId=2247902.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1988319?learningModuleId=1988313&topicCenterId=2247902
Entry ID: 1988319