Inquiry Learning

Questions are the center of all learning.  In a traditional classroom, the teacher is often the questioner and the purpose of the questions are usually to assess whether or not the students have learned  specific information. The big idea behind inquiry learning is less about textbooks and spoon-feeding information and more about allowing students to explore and guiding them through engaging hands-on experiences that allow for deeper understanding.  Inquiry learning is less about teaching concepts in isolation and more about combining the disciplines to allow for authentic, real-word connections to be made.  The role of the teacher needs to change from one that is telling information and questioning only to assess to one that is guiding and asking exploring questions.  I think it is very important to provide teachers with professional development on questioning strategies.  Asking questions is somewhat of an art form.  Learning how to ask the right types of questions to help guide students to think rather than just regurgitate information is key.  The system in which I work has spent the last few years providing professional development in just this area to a handful of teachers from each school.  As a system, we are moving forward and slowly but surely shifting away from the traditional type of learning to inquiry learning.  

I've created a taxedo with Inquiry Learning as the topic.  I included words that came to my mind when thinking about what inquiry learning is.  Here it is:

   

I've mentioned before that much of my experience has been in the gifted classroom.  For the past 8 years, I've had the opportunity to work with 1st-5th grade students during an ELT (extended learning time) of the school day.  During this time I've been able to work on my questioning skills and I've become so much more comfortable in this learning environment.  I've learned to "let go" and embrace failure as a learning experience.  Over the years, my students have learned that mistakes are good and we reflect on them to learn and do better next time.  In my new position of media specialist, I am taking all I've learned as a gifted teacher and using it to try and help teachers and students at my school get comfortable with inquiry learning and embrace failure for the sake of learning.  I've made it my mission this year to get students in the media center for so much more than simply checking out books.  It took until December, but I'm proud to say that I have groups of students from all grade levels (K-5) coming into the media center regularly to work on all sorts of projects and activities.  

Through working with all grade levels, I've come to notice that I am least comfortable with the primary grades, so I've chosen to write my mini-lessons for a group of high achieving first graders that I work with.  They come to me during math, so my focus will be problem solving which is one of the standards they are currently working on.  It is my goal to have them produce their own teaching video to help other students learn strategies for solving word problems. I'm planning to bring in the other disciplines as well.  They will be writing their own word problems including researched information about topics they are studying.  When students are creating something, the 8 principles of inquiry are achieved.  Having them write and create their own word problems using real world information gained will help to make it authentic.  Having them discover their own strategies for solving word problems will give them a deeper understanding of those strategies. They will be working collaboratively to make decisions about what they should include in their teaching video to make it better. I've just recently discovered MozillaPopcorn in another class and I'm thinking I will have them incorporate this video editor to include pop-up text in their video lesson.  To bring in "experts" we might look at already created teaching videos to see examples of great video lessons. We will discuss digital citizenship and internet safety when it come to sharing our created videos.  

I know this seems like quite a bit for first graders, but I've come to find out that younger students are the most willing to play, explore, and learn without the fear of making mistakes.  I've made other teaching videos with older students and I'm really looking forward to helping some of my youngest and most eager students create their own.