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Avatar of Angela Farrell
Angela Farrell
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Visible Thinking: Think, Puzzle, Explore 

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Visible Thinking: Think, Puzzle, Explore 

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The National Education Association (NEA) is more than 3 million people—educators, students, activists, workers, parents, neighbors, friends—who believe in opportunity for all students and in the power of public education to transform lives and create a more just and inclusive society.

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Visible Thinking Strategies Compass Points

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Visible Thinking Strategies Compass Points

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Inquiry classrooms are magical places; creative, student-driven, and dynamic. But when it's only the lesson you see unfolding, you're missing half the show. For years, I've focused my coaching work on the pedagogy of inquiry, trying to demystify what inquiry looks like in real classrooms.

While it's not as fun perhaps to write (or read) about what happens at the planning table, we cannot pretend that the magic of inquiry-classrooms just happens, well, magically. Planning for inquiry reminds me of the proverb: A river needs banks to flow. I see my lesson planning as creating the proverbial 'banks.' These banks provide the space and order necessary to encourage the freefall of ideas, divergent questions, and cognitive dissonance to take place.

In fact, I've found that lesson planning is the most creative part of my job. I've learned to embrace rather than dread it using this simple 5-Step Inquiry Lesson Plan.
Step 1: Connect with and question the content as a person, not as a teacher
Take off your teacher hat for a moment. How can you strengthen emotional bonds with and between your students within the context of this lesson? How can you share your own curiosity, doubts, and personality with students using the lesson as a vehicle? If the content isn't important, fascinating, and/or relevant to you, it's unlikely your students will find an emotional connection to it either.

What questions still perplex and fascinate you?

What relevant stories can you tell relating to the content?

Are there metaphors that might be helpful to students?

Do you remember the first time you learned this yourself?

Are there websites that explore these questions and ideas in greater detail?

Here's how I might approach the first step for an upcoming lesson. Let's say I'm teaching Shakespeare's Macbeth and we're on Act IV, Scene I[1]. You may remember this scene by its opening line: "Round about the cauldron go..." or it's repeated chorus: "Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble." It's an entire scene where witches create a complicated spell; full of challenging vocabulary and foreshadowing.

My emotional connection to the content:

This scene is bursting with gross, descriptive words-a recipe for disaster! It reminds me of potions class from the Harry Potter series. My husband is a former chef and he always talks about the importance of getting the right ingredients. The process involved here reminds me of him in the kitchen; so incredibly detailed and painstakingly precise.
My lingering questions and wonders relating to the content:

There are phrases in here that have been repeated for hundreds of years like "Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble."

Tons of rumors about the production issues haunted by prophesies. Why?

How can a cauldron simultaneously boil and bake?

How many times does the cat mew? Is the witch adding the number or repeating the previous witch? How do we know for sure?

Why such a long scene describing this concoction?

What's the difference between a spell and a charm?

Resources that will provide reliable and diverse perspectives on the content:

Folger Shakespeare Library: https://www.folger.edu/macbeth

Raphael Holinshed published his Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande in 1577. The second edition, published in 1587, was Shakespeare's primary reference work for most of his histories and many of his other plays, including Macbeth.

This 'emotional brain dump' was fun and took me no more than five minutes to accomplish. To get the students to connect with one another, I'll ask them to share their favorite dishes and analyze the ingredients that go into them (thinking about the role of ingredients in making a dish or a charm so special and memorable).
Step 2: Get clear on the goals and assessments
This is usually where we start when lesson planning: our objectives. Think about what you want students to get out of your lesson, and how you might measure these goals (even imperfectly). What mix of formative assessments will you use? Are there authentic assessments (products, performances or presentations) that you can use to motivate them individually or in teams? What do you want students to know (content), be able to do (skills), and/or believe (dispositions) by the end of this lesson or unit?

Again, using the Shakespeare example, I might choose the following mix of content and skill-related objectives for my lesson. I try not to list more than five main objectives so that I can stay focused (less is more). I also really try to make sure I balance the knowledge, skills (especially communication, critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration) and dispositions (patience, empathy, growth mindset) when listing out my objectives.

What will students know, do, and believe?(Knowledge, Skills, Dispositions)

How will we know we've achieved this?(Assessments)

Understand the scene's meaning (knowledge) CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.4

Ingredient Analysis and Questions group presentation; listening in on conversations

Take risks with ideas; communicate clearly

(skills)

Observations and student reflection survey

Back up conjectures with evidence (either from text, experience, or websites) CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.1

(skills)

Ingredient Analysis (source citations)

Gain confidence and interest in tackling challenging texts like this one (dispositions)

Student reflection survey

Step 3: Design the lesson and plot questions
Once I have a sense of the why and how, I am ready to create the 'flow.' This is where traditional lesson planning comes in. What's your hook or anticipatory set? How much time do you think you'll need to provide instruction before releasing students? Will assignments be rigorous enough, but not completely out of reach? Will students be grouped together, when and how? How will students be held accountable for their work?

As you go through the lesson sequencing, you'll want to simultaneously think about the driving questions for this lesson (in the event that students don't raise these questions on their own during the lesson), as well as 'pivot questions' that you can use to transition students to new activities or discussions. These questions are the ones you want students to really take time to think about. I often transfer these onto notecards and post them on the wall during a lesson and take them down as we address them. Students now alert me if there are questions still up on the wall.
Step 4: Check for questions, voice, and choice
After mapping out the lesson flow and the driving questions, I go back through it to check for two important things: opportunities for student questions and student choice.

Now, look back through each of your activities to make sure you've created time and opportunities for students to ask questions and make choices. Student voice (question-asking) and student choice are the bedrock of inquiry classrooms, so make sure you're providing space and structure for these things. In my own lesson planning, I'd place an "X" next to activities that explicitly provide this. There is no rule around how much or how many opportunities you provide, although I'd strive for a 50/50 balance between teacher-directed/teacher talk-time and student-directed/student talk-time.

Again, using the Macbeth example, here is what my lesson plan might look like at this point:

Personal Story (10 mins.)

What are the most important ingredients in your favorite dish?

What do recipes have to do with this scene (connection)?

Reading & Review (5 mins.)

What does this scene leave you feeling?

What questions does it raise for you?

Group Task: Ingredient Analysis (15 mins.)

How easy, difficult, impossible, and/or immoral would it be to obtain each ingredient here today?

Small Group Choice (10 mins.)

1) What's the most critical ingredient? Why?

2) How would you reverse the charm?

3) What ingredients may be missing?

Whole Group Sharing (5 mins.)

Which words were confusing and how did you find their definitions?

Which choice question did you choose and what did you come up with?

Closing (5 mins.)

What kind of 'prep work' for the charm needs to happen?

What questions linger? (share my own)

A Note about Unit Planning
While this plan is designed for a lesson, you can easily adapt it for an entire unit. Rather than plotting out the activities in minutes during Step 3, simply extend them into days.
Great Questions
Questions are the energy source inside inquiry classrooms. Even though I've written out driving questions, there should be questions peppered throughout the lesson; coming from me and hopefully the students. I like to share a short list of Great Questions with my students. These questions are great regardless of the content or grade level. They are divergent and encourage clear and critical thinking (and are also perfect for laminating onto desks). These questions are especially helpful when students are leading their own small groups and having discussions together.
Step 5: Rapidly reflect
This step is often ignored, but is a critical part of the inquiry cycle because it requires us as teachers to flex our reflective inquiry muscles! This step shouldn't require a lot of time, and can always be completed with the students after a lesson or a unit-after all, they're some of your best evaluators, having engaged in the lesson from start to finish. Set a timer for five minutes and answer two simple questions:

What went especially well?

What would I do differently next time?

Here is what I wrote after trying out the Macbeth lesson:

What went well?

* Great engagement and discussions while sorting ingredients

* 20 minutes was perfect amount of time for group projects

What would I change?

* Allow them to access websites to find definitions (reinforce source-citing)

* Groups no larger than 4 people, otherwise students can disengage

* Shorten favorite recipe-sharing time

Going through this process helps me reflect on perennial questions like: Did students pursue the anticipated line of inquiry? Did they latch onto a misconception and refuse to let it go? Was everyone is engaged; how do I know? Did students ask their own questions? Was it enough or too much student choice?
Conclusion
Successful inquiry classrooms may at times appear aimless and perhaps chaotic, but nothing could be further from the truth. Great inquiry lessons are actually some of the most carefully and thoughtfully planned learning events on the planet. Remember that a river needs banks to flow when thinking about guiding student inquiry. Be clear on why the river is flowing, where it's going, and how it will get there. The Five-Step Inquiry Lesson Plan will allow you to keep your knees bent and not fall over.

To download a template of 5-Step Inquiry Lesson Plan, go to: www.inquirypartners.com

[1] This lesson idea comes from Andrew Finley at West Seattle High School

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The 5-Step Inquiry Lesson Plan - Corwin Connect

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Inquiry classrooms are magical places; creative, student-driven, and dynamic. But when it's only the lesson you see unfolding, you're missing half the show. For years, I've focused my coaching work on the pedagogy of inquiry, trying to demystify what inquiry looks like in real classrooms. ...

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According to the World Economic Forum (2016), the top three skills required for work in 2020 are complex problem-solving, critical thinking and creativity. The traditional model of schooling, where students take a passive role in their learning, does not encourage the engagement and rigor required to develop these skills. Instead, new forms of learning must emerge, where students experience high levels of agency and become increasingly independent and capable of directing their learning.

Concept-Based Inquiry, or the use of inquiry-based approaches to teach for conceptual understanding, embeds student agency into its design. With a strong focus on questioning, teachers and students alike engage in problem-solving, as they investigate and sort through information. With its aim to develop transferable conceptual understandings, Concept-Based Inquiry gives students ownership over their thinking. Here are three ways that we can inspire students to become empowered agents of their learning in the concept-based classroom:

Our words and actions show students what we value. If we spend the majority of our time speaking at students, they will unlikely feel we want them to share their opinions and thoughts. If we want to inspire the next generation of critical thinkers, we need to provide opportunities for students to discuss their ideas. And we need to create a culture of inquiry, where students take risks and openly share their thoughts with their peers. So, how do we do this?

We ask better questions. As facilitators of learning, we need to ask our students conceptual questions that get to the heart of what they are exploring. We may ask, "How might people determine the reliability of information?" or "What might motivate people to migrate despite its challenges?" Such questions require students go beyond one-word answers and provide reasons for their thinking, opening the door to authentic dialogue.

We carve out space for student voice. Avoid overplanning learning engagements! Purposefully leave the last 10 to 15 minutes for students to "talk out" their thinking as a community. Use reflective questions, such as "What was something surprising for you?" or "What would you like more time to think about?" And importantly, encourage all students to share their thoughts, even those hesitant to speak. This creates an equitable classroom where students feel respected and valued.

Although teachers work backward from conceptual understandings in the planning process, it is vital we let students construct and express their own understandings! By exposing students to engaging case studies and posing a range of guiding questions, we build understanding from the ground up. This form of learning, called inductive learning, asks students to use evidence to back up their thinking. Not only is this a highly motivating form of learning, but also a way to develop reasoning within a Concept-Based Inquiry approach.

As we know, we often learn much more from individuals with thoughts that are different from our own. Asking students to articulate their own understanding allows us to highlight the diversity of thinking within our classrooms. When we give students the chance to express their understanding, they recognize their ability to be independent thinkers. They become empowered, critical citizens.

Conceptual understanding should not exist in a black box. It should be used to create ideas, test them out, and take positive action. Providing students with opportunities for real-world transfer allows them to see how their learning looks in context. This builds their agency, illuminating how their understanding can be used for a purpose.

Real-world transfer comes in many forms: students may discuss current events, take action in their community, or apply their thinking to projects. Engaging in projects that bring together learning from multiple subject areas prompts students to think in creative, integrated ways. Imagine students who apply mathematical understandings to an industrial design project to build shelters for the homeless. In addition to using their math learning, students would employ their interpersonal skills, reflect on stakeholder needs, and deepen their understanding of inequality. Viewing the world through multiple lenses helps our students make sense of complexity and become true problem-solvers.

Source:

World Economic Forum, 2016, "The Future of Jobs" accessed March 29th, 2018 at: https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs

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author: Carolyn Banuelos, Danielle James and Elise Lund

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Build Student Agency Through Concept-Based Inquiry - Corwin Connect

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According to the World Economic Forum (2016), the top three skills required for work in 2020 are complex problem-solving, critical thinking and creativity. The traditional model of schooling, where students take a passive role in their learning, does not encourage the engagement and rigor required ...

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Grant Wiggins - Understanding by Design (1 of 2)

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Over the past few weeks I have received a few interesting queries on Twitter, and Labor Day weekend seems like a nice time to respond to them and reflect on the school year ahead.

Two of the questions concern the relationship between inquiry and UbD:

Q1: Do you consider UbD to be inquiry learning?

Q2: How do we reconcile UbD with inquiry, PBL and other open-ended divergent goals? How well do teacher-designed "essential questions" fit with approaches such as Make Just One Change where work is driven by student questions?

Let's take the 1 st question first since it is more straightforward. The aim of "understanding" requires student inquiry. That inquiry may be tightly controlled or very open-ended: socratic seminar vs. highly-directed teacher-led discussion, for example. But some student inquiry leading to student inference is an essential and non-negotiable part of learning for understanding. Why? Because understanding is dependent upon drawing inferences by oneself - as well as testing and justifying those inferences - if only to question or verify claims made by the teacher, other students, or authors. Otherwise, it is rote learning with no thinking behind it.

However, understanding requires both content acquisition and attempts to apply learning to new situations (transfer). So, strictly speaking, I don't think UbD "is" inquiry learning any more than soccer or reading is (even though both require inquiry for success). Inquiry is necessary but not sufficient; it is a key strategy to be used as part of achieving understanding, and there are varied approaches to such inquiry.

The second question is trickier and raises important questions about educational aims. If the aim of education is to produce autonomous and inquisitive students, then it seems plausible to argue that student inquiry (and thus, student questions) should drive curriculum. Thus, a teacher design that chooses the questions and shapes the learning based on the questions is heading in a different more closed direction.

I think it's a false either-or. There are no doubt teachers using UbD (and essential questions specifically) whose sole aim is to get students to come to pre-set understandings, knowledge and skill. Thus, the questions may be rich and the work may involve some inquiry, but - bottom line - the goals are convergent: "I want as teacher to ensure that you as students learn THIS with understanding." We can see how this would work in a high school history or science class with fairly circumscribed Understandings and related assessments.

An open design in UbD. However, the design need not be so closed or convergent to be a valid UbD design. For example, the essential question in history might be: What questions offer the greatest insight into this period? A related understanding, rather than being a specific idea concerning history that I want all students to grasp, might instead be "No right answer exists, but some answers are better than others because they are more supportable by evidence and argument." Now, the unit is framed, but the outcomes are not prescribed, and inquiry can fruitfully proceed in various ways.

I would argue, in fact, that thinking through projects, KWL's and other student-generated work in a UbD way is a better approach to design than leaving everything open. Because then we and the students will have to have thought through in advance the criteria of success - the difference between effective and ineffective projects - instead of sending the message that anything you do as an inquirer is fine as long as it is a good-faith effort. (And PBL is not open-ended anyway. Some solutions are better than others, just as some Understandings are better than others.)

I used to say to my English students: "You need to understand that there are no correct final answers to any question of literary interpretation. But some answers are better than others. One purpose of this course is to understand how both statements can be true at the same time."

Gradual release. Why should the teacher frame courses by essential questions? For the same reason that the soccer coach should design most practices: the framing is a function of expertise and experience. It is my job as teacher to know the vital, penetrating, and interesting questions. That does not preclude student-generated questions. On the contrary, by the teacher modeling what good questions are and how interesting work can be guided by good questions, the student is more likely to become a better autonomous questioner in the end - assuming we build our courses so that, over the long haul, the gradual release of teacher responsibility kicks in.

And that gradual release idea is the essence of backward design in UbD - and a great place to reflect this weekend. How am I designing the year to make it most likely that students become increasingly autonomous as questioners and arguers (in the Common Core sense) - while still learning and understanding content of value? Viewed this way, there is no dichotomy at all between UbD and inquiry-based pedagogy.

PS: Our most recent book - Essential Questions: Doorways to Understanding - offers numerous tips and approaches on how to honor these ideas.

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UbD and Inquiry - a Response to 2 Questions

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Over the past few weeks I have received a few interesting queries on Twitter, and Labor Day weekend seems like a nice time to respond to them and reflect on the school year ahead. Two of the questions concern the relationship between inquiry and UbD: Q1: Do you consider UbD to be inquiry learning?

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Resource Summary

"Let's build dynamic learning communities that engage students, promote deep understanding, and sustain a lifetime of inquiry. Once again we are in the throes of curriculum reforms designed to transform education. However, these efforts generally neglect the vital role classroom and school culture play in promoting learning. Any curriculum, good or bad, will sink or float on the culture of the classroom in which it is enacted. Culture matters not only to realize curricular goals, but also as a shaper of students' development as powerful thinkers and learners. Creating Cultures of Thinking, written by leading Harvard University researcher Ron Ritchhart, builds the case for "enculturation" as the key to deep learning and the development of the habits of mind and dispositions needed in a changing world. He demystifies the process of creating dynamic learning communities by first identifying and then walking us through the eight forces we must marshal to build strong group culture. Case studies, practical guidelines, self-assessments, and inquiry projects enable teachers and administrators-as well as anyone interested in fostering group learning-to understand and shape powerful learning communities."

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Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly

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"Let's build dynamic learning communities that engage students, promote deep understanding, and sustain a lifetime of inquiry. Once again we are in the throes of curriculum reforms designed to transform education. However, these efforts generally neglect the vital role classroom and school culture play in promoting learning.

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Find out more about John Hattie’s Visible Learning meta-study

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Making Learning Visible has a goal to create and sustain powerful cultures of learning in classrooms and across schools that nurture individual and group learning. Though the project focuses on using documentation as a central pillar of group learning, MLV is ultimately a project about democracy. By learning in groups, we also learn about the cultures and values of others. By seeing how these unique perspectives influence the learning process, we gain a greater understanding of what we learn as well as each other.
For access to all Making Learning Visible resources on this website (as used to be accessible from the original MLV website), click here.

Additional Publications

Making Learning Visible: Children as Individual and Group Learners
Project Zero and Reggio Children (2001)

This book reports on a collaboration between Project Zero and the Municipal Preschools and Infant-toddler Centers of Reggio Emilia, Italy, on the nature of learning in groups and how to understand, support, document, and assess individual and group learning. The authors argue that systematic and purposeful documentation of the ways in which groups develop ideas, theories, and understandings is fundamental to the meta-cognitive activity that is critical to the learning of individuals as well as groups.

Selected Articles

Selected Videos

Related Websites

The Wheelock Documentation Studio: The Wheelock Documentation Studio is a space for educators to learn about, develop, and exhibit documentation from a variety of learning contexts.

The Boston Public Schools Early Childhood Making Learning Visible Weebly: This site includes videos, documentation examples, and other resources related to MLV practices in early childhood classrooms.

Reggio Children: International Center for the Defense and Promotion of the Rights and Potentials of All Children - is a mixed public-private company established in 1994 on the initiative of Loris Malaguzzi and a group of local citizens. Reggio Children's mission is to carry out experimental research and to promote and disseminate high quality education worldwide. Reggio Children also manages the educational and cultural exchange initiatives between the municipal early childhood institutions of Reggio Emilia and educators and researchers from around the world.

Pictures of Practice

Documentation collected for this purpose helps teachers stay close to students' learning and interests by enabling them to revisit a learning experience. It leads teachers to compare what they thought would happen to what really went on and informs decisions about where to go next. Sharing this kind of documentation with others reduces the subjectivity of a single person's analysis and interpretation and can deepen understanding. This form of documentation is the least shaped (or the most "raw") of the three types described here. Reviewing this type of documentation often influences the amount of time a group spends on a topic and the level of student involvement in shaping the learning experience.

Making visible images of learning and being together in a group is a way to foster group identity and learning. This type of documentation promotes conversation or deepens understanding about one or more aspects of a learning experience. It can serve as a memory of learning in the classroom, allowing children and adults to reflect on, evaluate, and build on their previous work and ideas. Sharing documentation back with learners can take many forms: a photocopied sheet of paper, words repeated back to students, work brought back to a small group or put up on a wall, or a carefully arranged panel. The examples in this section range from more immediate and "in the moment" to more fully framed and shaped.

Documentation is an act of communication; it makes public a conversation about what we value. When preparing documentation to stand on its own, documenters need to provide enough context and framing so that others can derive meaning from it. Depending on the purposes and setting for the documentation, the context could include logistical information, such as key names, dates, and age group represented, as well as the purpose of the learning experience.

Project Info

Funders: Atlantic Philanthropies, the Barr Foundation, the Ohio Department of Education, and the Massachusetts Department of Education

Events

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Making Learning Visible has a goal to create and sustain powerful cultures of learning in classrooms and across schools that nurture individual and group learning. Though the project focuses on using documentation as a central pillar of group learning, MLV is ultimately a project about democracy.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u84ZsS6niPc

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLq3kV55ESw

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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9IDMOgH1Nak

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Playful inquiry -- try this anywhere: Robyn Stratton-Berkessel at TEDxNavesink

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A simple, intentionally appreciative inquiry can result in a playful state that fosters creativity, openness and togetherness. Grounded in the science of positive psychology, this interactive talk demonstrates how appreciative inquiry opens us up to experience even greater positivity. The result: less fear and strong heartfelt connections and understanding between people, even strangers.

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Inquiry-Based Learning: From Teacher Driven to Student-Driven

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Inquiry-Based Learning: From Teacher Driven to Student-Driven

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http://www.edutopia.org/practice/inquiry-based-learning-teacher-guided-student-driven

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How It's Done

Begin With Guided Inquiry

Teacher-guided inquiry can build background knowledge of the topic before letting students take the reins in developing their own inquiry. With guided inquiry:

Teachers start with an overall guiding question.

Teachers know what they want their students to understand beforehand.

Students know what the outcome of the inquiry will be.

"Guided inquiry is like a typical science lesson," explains Anne DiCola, Ralston Elementary's instructional coach. "The teacher knows that they want kids to understand what happens when water boils. So they take them through an inquiry process; they make a hypothesis, what they think will happen. They talk about all of the materials they're using. They're going to have one or more guided questions. But the teacher knows in the end how the lab's going to end. They know what they want the students to know or do by the end of the lab."

Ralston teachers build toward student-driven inquiry throughout the course of the unit. Through teacher-guided inquiry over a series of lessons, teachers model how to develop questions, show their students that there are multiple ways to problem solve, and prepare them to lead their own inquiry by the end of the unit.

Teach Students How to Question

Explore and Model Different Types of Deeper-Level Questions

An important aspect of inquiry-based learning is teaching students how to ask deeper questions. When the teachers at Ralston had students begin creating their own inquiries, the questions were the type that could be answered with a Google search. Because they weren't coming up with deeper-level questions, the teachers had to pause and reflect on how they were modeling questioning to their students. They asked themselves, "What's an appropriate question? What kinds of questions work?"

According to Principal Dawn Odean, the following two tips helped Ralston teachers:

Across grade levels, reflect on how you model questioning from kindergarten and up.

Pose big questions that don't necessarily have a single answer -- or any answer.

"We're really looking at students being creative problem solvers," explains Odean. "For example, if students are reading a common text together, or posing questions about how they're relating to the text, or how they think it might impact the world, there may not be one answer for that. As we start to pose those questions, we're hoping that students start to pose those questions for themselves in a way that they can create an inquiry. Teachers are guiding with higher-level questions to really get students thinking and learning how to question themselves."

Example Questions

D.J. Osmack, Ralston's art teacher, integrated science and art together by having his students create their own paint. In his first art class, they followed a specific paint-making recipe. In the second class, they created a paint that fit their needs as artists. This is where the student-driven inquiry came in. What kind of paint did they want to create?

To guide his students in creating their own questions, Osmack asked:

How can you make this paint fit your needs as an artist?

As a scientist, how are you going to change or modify this paint so that it works?

What is your reaction to your paint?

Did your paint turn out the way you wanted it to?

Encouraged by these questions, his students began asking questions like:

What kind of artwork do I want to create?

Does my paint need to be thick, thin, consistent, or chunky to create the artistic effect that I'm looking for?

What ingredients would I need to add to create the type of paint that I want?

"You have to form your questions the right way so you're not really taking over their creative process, but helping that creative process," clarifies Osmack, who noted how these student-generated questions encouraged them to explore and experiment on their own.

Let Your Students Drive Their Own Inquiry

Student-Driven Inquiry Led by a Question

In the guided inquiry example of boiling water, the teacher knows that she wants students to understand what happens when water boils. She creates a question that will guide students to an outcome already known to them.

The student-driven inquiry is what happens after the guided inquiry. Now that students know what happens when water boils, what questions come up for them? Their inquiry questions might be:

How much time would it take to melt a few ice cubes in boiling water?

How much time would it take to boil twice the amount of water?

"Whatever it is that they're wondering about, that's the student-driven piece," elaborates DiCola. "That may or may not be something that the teacher envisioned happening afterwards. So they're having the opportunity to say, 'This is what I'm wondering about now. Now I'm going to go through that same process. I'm going to create a guiding question. I'm going to make a hypothesis. I'm going to gather the materials that I need.' It really flips the classroom in the sense that the student is then in the driver seat. And what's really exciting is when they can pose a question that maybe the teacher doesn't know the answer to, and they're really saying, 'Yeah, let's learn this together.'"

Guide Your Students' Inquiry With a Problem

Inquiry isn't driven only by questioning, but also by introducing a problem.

"Being the second-grade math teacher," explains Lindsay Ball, "I found that giving students an opportunity to really inquire and then solve their own problems in math has been a great opportunity. I can pose a problem for them and then let them find a different way to solve that information and to share what they're thinking. We do a lot of collaborative conversations. The students are able to share what their thinking was, but then at the same time, listen to another child's thinking, and recognize there can be different ways to get to the same conclusion or the same outcome -- and [realize] that everybody thinks in a different way, and everybody's thoughts are valuable."

An Example Problem

Ball, who also teaches science, created a lesson that introduced eggs and seeds to her students and had them discover which material was which through this problem:

Two scientists have mixed up two materials. They know one is seeds and one is eggs, but they have no idea which is which. How can we help them solve that problem?

Explore Student-Driven, Problem-Led Inquiry

Ball's seeds vs. eggs problem inspired student inquiry that led their process of discovery. They came up with six stations, and their experiments came from their own inquiry. "I like doing it this way because you get to touch what you're actually doing instead of just looking at it," explains Logan, a second-grade student.

1. The Planting Station

Some kids planted the seed and the egg, pulling from their prior knowledge that a seed would likely grow and nothing would happen to the egg.

2. The Dissecting Station

Other students broke the egg and seed open, thinking that they might find a yolk or animal inside of the egg.

3. The Heating Station

Others put their egg and seed under a heating lamp, knowing that a mother chicken will sit on her eggs to make them hatch.

4. The Water Station

Some students put their eggs in water, knowing that fish eggs hatch when in water. Other students thought about density. If one of the materials were to sink or float, it might help them determine which was an egg and which was a seed.

5. The Weighing Station

Others thought that eggs would be heavier than seeds and weighed both materials.

6. The Size Station

Some kids thought that the egg would be bigger than the seed, and they looked at both under a microscope to compare sizes. They also measured them with a measuring tape.

"We found that the students really are able to take a bigger and a deeper passion in what they're learning because it's really what they care about versus what they think their teacher cares about," emphasizes Ball.

"We really don't have a limit," adds Kendall, a fourth-grade student. "We get to learn how to do this stuff with our own ideas."

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Giving Students the Opportunity to Drive Lessons | Edutopia

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Teacher-guided inquiry can build background knowledge of the topic before letting students take the reins in developing their own inquiry. With guided inquiry: Teachers start with an overall guiding question. Teachers know what they want their students to understand beforehand. Students know what the outcome of the inquiry will be.

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https://www.artofmathematics.org/blogs/cvonrenesse/inquiry-is-differentiation

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Written by: Dr. Christine von Renesse

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

There is a part of me that wants to constantly find out where my whole class is at and what all my students are ready to learn next. What is the next best question for them? The problem is that this task is completely impossible! All students in a class will be different. Different how? I just read a paper by the educational psychologist David Jonassen [], in which he explains some of the individual differences that influence problem solving. Among the characteristics he lists are:

fatigue, anxiety, stress

familiarity with the problem type,

domain and structural knowledge (how much does the student already know about the content and how well is it integrated),

cognitive controls (patterns of thinking that control how learners process and reason, e.g. independence and flexibility),

metacognition (awareness of how one learns, ability to judge the difficulty of a task, monitoring understanding, assessment of learning process, etc),

beliefs about knowledge and problem solving (e.g. the belief that "knowledge is either right or wrong"),

affective and motivational elements (attitudes, beliefs about learner's ability, persistence, making choices, interest, confidence, etc.)

Given the reality of all these differences, how can I even dream of a functional classroom in which every student is learning at their own learning edge?

Before I describe some of the tools we have been trying out in our classes, I invite you to watch Volker as he is supporting 4 students who are all at very different levels in their learning of the Rubik's cube:

Some Tools

Using Inquiry

As the title of this blog post suggests I believe that inquiry helps tremendously in reaching learners on different levels at the same time - even if they all work on the same investigations. Why? First of all, students can work at their own pace. This is hugely important since students have to be processing the ideas and concepts at their speed to deeply make sense of them. When students are exploring mathematics they can also use strategies and representations that they feel comfortable with. It is amazing to see in how many different (often to me totally new) ways students solve problems in all the classes I teach, from math for liberal arts through calculus 3. They can first make sense of the mathematics using their own way of thinking and then later learn from their peers other ways and connections. Additionally, since students are in charge of their learning process they can ask for help exactly when they need it, either from their peers or from me.

The Truth

I believe that most students know pretty well how they compare to other students and that they don't like having to fit in and be the same all the time. So I do prefer to be honest about the differences. Some students are incredibly persistent, some get quickly frustrated, some are super fast and some like to take their time, etc. It is actually a relief to my students and me when all of these differences are on the table and can be addressed openly. Students tell me how much they value being seen in my class and I can see how they engage and advance in their learning process.

Homogeneous Groups

I want my students to be as close to their learning edge as possible, which means they have to work in groups that are as similar as possible. See our strategies for grouping to learn about how to make this happen.

Good (Large) Problems

Ok, by now I know that it is impossible to find one particular task that will be just at the right level for all my students. Instead of trying to find one I now like to look for larger problems that have a "low thresh hold" and a "high ceiling". In my perfect world every student is able to engage with the problem (and find it interesting) while the problem is complex enough that the really strong students are still challenged. An example of a really good problem would be the straight cut origami from the Art and Sculpture book : Given some polygonal shape on paper, fold up the paper in a way that you can cut out the whole shape in one straight cut.

Small Investigations and Extension Questions

Some concepts are too complex to be just be stated as one large problem, for instance the convergence of a geometric series in a math for liberal arts class. Instead of overwhelming the students with the large problem, we can ask a series of smaller investigations. It is fairly straightforward to adjust the investigations to be easy enough, especially if students can work in groups and you are available as a resource. But now we have the really fast students who want or need to be challenged more. So let's make extension questions that engage the groups that are done with the core investigations. Yes, this is a lot of work and I am still working on always having good extension questions myself. What makes an extension question "good"? I want it to be interesting, challenging but possible for the stronger students, and not "pre-teaching" any material that will be coming later in the class -- since that would only make my differentiation problem worse later on. In our math for liberal arts materials many sections have "Further Investigations" which can be used as extension questions. At the end of chapter 4 of the book The Infinite you can for instance find deeper questions about series convergence.

Two Topics

Another way of bringing in differentiation into your class is by letting students work on two different topics simultaneously. The students choose when they are ready to switch tasks for a while and then come back later to pick up the first topic again. Of course these two topics could be from different books! Our mixing it up blog shows the dependencies of our book chapters so you see which chapters can stand alone.
Volker's classroom reminds me a bit of how my daughter learns in a Montessori classroom . She can always choose what she wants to learn in the moment but she has larger learning goals that remind her to attempt all activities at some point.

See in the video clips below how Volker gives students in one group different tasks and later explains to his students how to work on the two chapters (Rubik's cube and Kakuro Puzzles) simultaneously.

Resources for Extra Support

Having resources available is helpful to all students, but it is important that the resources don't avoid the students' learning edges. If the resources make the task too easy or even unnecessary, there is no learning happening anymore. Here is an example: In my calculus 3 class, the students can always use play-dough to model the graphs of the functions they are studying. It is amazing to see how much students at any level appreciate this simple medium to help them visualize, communicate and model ideas. While I also usually allow www.worlframalpha.com and graphing calculators during class there are tasks for which I limit their use. If my students for instance grapple with the idea of convergent or divergent series, receiving the answer from the technology can take the fun and curiosity out of the exploration and discussion. Similarly, I allow students to watch videos on procedures of integration after they developed and made sense of the procedure themselves.

Whole Class discussions

This is kind of funny because whole class discussions actually help make knowledge more equal which makes the classroom experience less differentiated. So while this is not really a tool to help students at their individual learning edges, it is a tool to bring out the differences and spread ideas and questions around the class. As a result student knowledge and learning edges are a bit more similar than before. I like to do this especially in classes like calculus where I need to cover material more quickly than some students or groups are ready for independently. But class discussions also help increase curiosity and motivation and make any class more fun for me.

Assessment

Assessment and differentiation is a tricky subject, it seems like 4 professors can easily have 5 opinions ;-)
For me it depends on the audience. In my calculus classes for instance I believe that exams have to be the same for all students. But homework can be more differentiated. Students can write up their thinking about their current knowledge edge, which will differ from student to student. Instead of grading the knowledge level I can grade the process, their thinking and writing ability and their effort and persistence. In my math for liberal arts classes I like to assess students differently, using projects and posters as assessment techniques which allow students to bring in strengths outside of mathematics, for example a student's poem or a song .

K-12 and Research about Differentiation

Differentiation in K-12 has different challenges than in college, I think. Carol Tomlinson has published several books to that effort and also started research on differentiation in higher education (not math).[]. It seems to me that there is a need for more research about differentiation in higher education mathematics.

Bibliography:
1. Jonassen, David H. "Toward a Design Theory of Problem Solving." Educational Technology Research and Development. 48.4 (2000): 63-85. ↩ 2. Tomlinson, Carol A. and Santangelo, Tanya "The Application of Differentiated Instruction in Postsecondary Environments: Benefits, Challenges and Future Directions". International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. 20.3 (2009): 307-323. ↩

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As the title of this blog post suggests I believe that inquiry helps tremendously in reaching learners on different levels at the same time - even if they all work on the same investigations. Why? First of all, students can work at their own pace.

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Inquiry-based science and English language development are a natural fit.
Inquiry-based science is a powerful way to learn science, regardless of a student's language background. When students ask questions, write observations, make predictions, share their thinking, and reason and debate with each other, they are using language to make authentic and meaningful connections to the scientific phenomena they are investigating. When English language learners are supported by teachers to fully participate in inquiry-based science, the increased communication and sophisticated uses of language that take place during investigations engage them in linguistic work that can support English language development.

Classrooms are becoming increasingly diverse.
The linguistic diversity of K-12 classrooms has been rapidly increasing in every part of the country. By 2030, English will be the second language of approximately 40 percent of school-age children in the United States. This shift, along with changing standards in science, math, and English language arts, places heightened demands on teachers.

Teachers need support to foster a language-rich, content-rich environment for science learning.
In 2010, the Institute for Inquiry® began a district-wide partnership with the Sonoma Valley Unified School District to provide all elementary school teachers with an intensive program of professional development. This program, which experimented with new approaches to professional development, was designed to equip teachers with classroom strategies that support science as a context for English language development.

An Educators Guide for Inquiry-based Science and English Language Development shares the Institute for Inquiry's approach to their work in Sonoma. It highlights professional development design and teaching practices that can serve as resources for teachers, teacher educators, professional development providers, district leaders, and researchers.
This program and the contents of this website were developed under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Investing in Innovation (i3) Program. However, these contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal government. Additional funding for this project was provided by the Vadasz Family Foundation and the Sonoma Valley Education Foundation.

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Inquiry-based Science and English Language Development | Exploratorium

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Inquiry-based science and English language development are a natural fit. Inquiry-based science is a powerful way to learn science, regardless of a student's language background. When students ask questions, write observations, make predictions, share their thinking, and reason and debate with each other, they are using language to make authentic and meaningful connections to the scientific phenomena they are investigating.

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English Language Learners - Schoolyard Learning

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English Language Learners - Schoolyard Learning

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http://web.missouri.edu/~volkmannmj/4630/ELL&Inquiry.pdf

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http://www.ibmidatlantic.org/Inquiry_as_stance.pdf

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"Solving 25 Problems in Unit Design"
"Authentic Learning in the Digital Age"
"Sparking Student Creativity"
"Developing More Curious Minds"
"Comprehension & Collaboration"
"Classroom Instruction that Works"
"Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design"
"Assessment and Student Success in a Differentiated Classroom"

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https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=LxCFCgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=does+inquiry+based+learning+work&ots=-8EUopX0To&sig=zgLcKTb9u0t0ooSmic8dIqENZKM#v=onepage&q&f=false

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http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563215303356

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA1Aqp0sPQo

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcV4RXC-V94

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The Power of Wonder: Jeff Hoffman at TEDxWallStreet

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Jeff Hoffman is an accomplished entrepreneur and innovator in the fields of Internet, e-commerce and entertainment. In 2010, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award in Entrepreneurship from the National CEO Council and was also inducted into the Hall of Fame for Entrepreneurs by the International Association of College Entrepreneurs.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFt15Ig64Yg

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The power of ummmm... | Kath Murdoch | TEDxWestVancouverED

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https://www.ted.com/talks/diana_laufenberg_3_ways_to_teach

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Get a daily email featuring the latest talk, plus a quick mix of trending content.

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Diana Laufenberg: How to learn? From mistakes

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Diana Laufenberg shares three surprising things she has learned about teaching -- including a key insight about learning from mistakes.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdYev6MXTOA&feature=player_embedded

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http://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/4-phases-inquiry-based-learning-guide-teachers/

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by Terry Heick

According to Indiana University Bloomington, Inquiry-based learning is an "instructional model that centers learning on a solving a particular problem or answering a central question. There are several different inquiry-based learning models, but most have several general elements in common:

Learning focuses around a meaningful, ill-structured problem that demands consideration of diverse perspectives

Academic content-learning occurs as a natural part of the process as students work towards finding solutions

Learners, working collaboratively, assume an active role in the learning process

Teachers provide learners with learning supports and rich multiple media sources of information to assist students in successfully finding solutions

Learners share and defend solutions publicly in some manner"

The process itself can be broken down into stages, or phases, that help teachers frame instruction. The model we've created can be used as a guide for teachers, as it includes teacher and student indicators at each stage, ideal "tones" of each phase, and even apps that can support that phase as well.

Inquiry-based learning is an approach that can easily accommodate project-based learning, challenge-based learning, place-based education, blended learning, and other trends in education.
4 Phases of Inquiry-Based Learning: A Guide For Teachers Big Idea: Dive into engaging, relevant, and credible media forms to identify a 'need' or opportunity for inquiry
The first phase of inquiry (often produced by strategies for promoting inquiry-based learning) is one characterized by interaction. This interaction can be:

Student-to-material. This material is ideally obtained through formal (i.e., research) and informal (e.g., reading, social and digital media, collaboration) means. It can be modeled or supplemented by teacher-provided materials

Student-to-peer. This interaction is chosen by teacher or student, informed by need for information and perspective

Student-to-expert (experts within relevant fields at accessible levels)

Student-to-media (digital, text, pure data, etc.)

The nature of inquiry is ideally both curiosity-based and fluid. Narrow criteria, restrictive rubrics, and other traditional artifacts of 'school work' can stifle inquiry at this point of the learning process. The teacher's role at this point in the learning process is focused on resources, modeling curiosity, and cognitive coaching.

Tone: Open-minded, curious, unburdened, playful

Student Indicators: actively skims a variety of media, follows curiosity, responds with awe, dwells with certain media depending on curiosity or perceived utility; seeks out peers for ideas and resources

Teacher Indicators: models curiosity, thinks-aloud when interacting with disparate media, asks probing questions, withholds evaluative statements, provides exemplars, monitors and encourages student thinking habits

Apps: FlipBoard, Pocket, Podkicker, Zotero

Appropriate Questions: What sources of information are available to me? What do others around me know? What's worth studying? What possibilities, problems, or situations tend to interest me? What types of experiences, perspectives, and data are available to me? When am I at my best?
Big Idea: Summarizing, paraphrasing, and categorizing learning with teacher or expert support.
This happens by analyzing data, identifying and clarifying misconceptions, and otherwise 'getting a feel' for the scale, nature, and possibility of selected topics of inquiry.

After skimming, reading, watching, and otherwise interacting with a variety of media, this stage of the inquiry process is centered around students clarifying both their own thinking, and the nature of 'things' around them: ideas for projects, scientific challenges, opportunities for revision, need for design thinking, a new scale to tackle persistent problems, etc.

Thinking patterns are both inward and reflective, and outward and communicated. In that way, students both reflect on their own knowledge, while beginning to identify possible pathways forward.

Tone: Slightly more focused, reflective, independent, cautious

Student Indicators: Paraphrases understanding in familiar language; resists looking for 'answers' and 'solutions'; distinguishes between fact and opinion; evaluates the credibility and relevance of sources; focused on possibility

Teacher Indicators: offers non-evaluative and frequent feedback; provides relevant graphic organizers and other ways to 'frame' student thinking; asks probing questions that focus on student thinking: what they know and why they think they know it;

Appropriate Questions: What's the big picture here? What are the pieces and how do they fit? What's accessible, and what's not? What's possible? Am I missing critical data, perspectives, or opportunities for collaboration that could further clarify my thinking? What do I seem to understand, and how do I know?
Apps: MindMeister, WordPress, Quora, reddit Big Idea: Asking questions to drive continued, self-directed inquiry
The questioning phase is a critical phase of the inquiry-based learning process, if for no other reason than misunderstandings, lack of organization, uneven confidence, or an inability to see the 'big picture' surface here more clearly than other phases.

Students and teachers alike must also be able to trust the nature and patterns of inquiry that are often recursive and iterative: They often move back and forth between phases, and new skills and understandings can be obtained in frustratingly small increments. Inquiry-based learning is more about the process, tone, and instincts of learning than other 'tidier' academic forms, which can require both students and teachers to adjust their measures of progress, quality, and success.

Tone: Creative, confident, interdependent

Student Indicators: Curious, precise with questions, self-monitoring, big-picture thinking, little-picture application

Teacher Indicators: models questioning, thinks-aloud in revising irrelevant or otherwise flawed questions; models use of concept-mapping tools to analyze thinking; hosts QFT sessions and Socratic seminars

Appropriate Questions: What's worth understanding? Where are my knowledge gaps? What is both within and beyond my reach? What have I done in the past that can help me in this situation moving forward?

Apps: Evernote, MindMeister, twitter, Quora, reddit
Big Idea: Designing an accessible, relevant, and curiosity-driven action or product to culminate and justify inquiry
At this final stage of the inquiry-based learning process, learners are focused on design.

Design of solutions to address problems within a manageable scale

Design of logical and curiosity-based applications of current understanding

Design of next steps to extend their own learning pathway

Tone: Creative, restrained, calculating

Appropriate Questions:What now? What audience makes sense for this research? Where can I do 'good work'? What would be 'cool'? What have others before me done?

Apps: Posts, Mextures, Inkist, Google Drive, DesignPad, Foldify

Student Indicators: Clarifies thinking, busy, self-directed, uncertain but efficacious, follows curiosity

Teacher Indicators: Creates 'conditions and means' for collaboration; i dentifies areas for revision, reflects back on entire process (i.e., "how we get to this point")
4 Student Questions For Post-Phase Reflection
After the inquiry-based learning process is 'finished' (for the purposes of classroom work, publishing, grading, etc.), it can be helpful for students to reflect in the inquiry-based learning process through questions such as:

What skills did I depend on?

What do I now understand more deeply, and how do I know?

If I had more time or resources, what else could I have done?

What is the role of inquiry in learning?
4 Phases of Inquiry-Based Learning: A Guide For Teachers; image attribution flickr user woodleywonderworks and usgahumphreys

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4 Phases Of Inquiry-Based Learning: A Guide For Teachers

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by Terry Heick According to Indiana University Bloomington, Inquiry-based learning is an "instructional model that centers learning on a solving a particular problem or answering a central question.

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http://www.edutopia.org/blog/designing-learning-that-matters-joshua-block

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Deep learning often happens when learners encounter experiences that challenge them to figure something out, explore new information, and create a product. (Does this match the memory you just recalled?) According to Jal Mehta:

Learning is fundamentally an act of vulnerability. It is an acknowledgement that what one knows is not sufficient, and that new information and new thinking about that information is needed.

The sad truth is that, for most of us, many of our experiences of deep learning occurred outside of school. The good news is that it is possible to bring the characteristics of deep learning to classrooms and school learning. Designing curriculum is the point when teachers can be innovative in order to create memorable and profound opportunities for their students. What does it take to design deep learning experiences that matter to students? Here are four ideas. Please share additional ideas in the comments below.

1. Use Inquiry

Chances are that your example of deep learning involved trying to figure something out. When learning is framed with problems and essential questions, there are clear reasons to pursue information. True inquiry allows for debate and encourages students to develop ideas that they can support with evidence. For example, my unit on Revolutions begins with the question, "What is a revolution?" I tell students that the dictionary won't be much help (although they are welcome to use it), but that they must come up with a definition which they can support. After the class has developed and debated ideas, we revisit these ideas regularly as we study different historic and contemporary examples of revolutions (or non-revolutions, depending on their definitions).

2. Look for Inspiration

Instead of beginning the unit-planning process by thinking of standards or by focusing solely on content, try to find examples of inspirational work in the world. Some examples:

A particularly poignant radio piece and issues faced by transgender youth started me thinking about podcasts, so as a culminating project in a unit that included a novel with a theme of racial boundaries, I challenged my students to create a podcast about crossing boundaries.

A newspaper article that creatively integrated text and media encouraged me to have my students create products that integrated text and media.

A crisis around education funding in our city led me to a digital story project that invited students to share their own ideas about Education and Democracy.

Standards matter, of course, but they are easily integrated into a larger, more creative vision for learning.

3. Remember to Ask "Why?"

Educators should always have an answer for that whiny kid off to the side who wants to know, "Why are we learning this?" I try to answer this question early on, before anyone has had a chance to ask it. At its best, school learning can matter to students on many levels. It might connect to recent events, be related to students' lives, or investigate an issue that is misunderstood by many. Whatever the reason for a unit, make sure that it's clear to you and clear to students.

4. Let Them Loose!

Chances are that the example of deeper learning you recalled when you started reading this post was not something you were forced to do. Choice and personal expression are powerful ways of allowing students to find themselves in their own learning. Project-based learning can transform old visions of school and make learning about more than retaining information. As I've said before, my students regularly amaze me with their abilities, their commitment to their work, and the products that they create. Jasmin and Kia are two examples of students who took a project idea beyond my expectations.

There is nothing inherently engaging, creative, or fun about school. In fact most school experiences are remarkably unmemorable. Yet school learning can be transformative, and school can help students discover themselves and their abilities. Our work as educators is to design experiences that allow this to happen.

How do you lead your students to deep learning?

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Designing Learning That Matters | Edutopia

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Deep learning often happens when learners encounter experiences that challenge them to figure something out, explore new information, and create a product. (Does this match the memory you just recalled?) According to Jal Mehta: Learning is fundamentally an act of vulnerability.

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http://www.edutopia.org/blog/why-curiosity-enhances-learning-marianne-stenger

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"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." -- Albert Einstein

It's no secret that curiosity makes learning more effective and enjoyable. Curious students not only ask questions, but also actively seek out the answers. Without curiosity, Sir Isaac Newton would have never formulated the laws of physics, Alexander Fleming probably wouldn't have discovered penicillin, and Marie Curie's pioneering research on radioactivity may not exist.

Instilling students with a strong desire to know or learn something is what every teacher lives for, and research has even shown that curiosity is just as important as intelligence in determining how well students do in school. But how much do we really know about its role in the learning process?

Your Brain Likes Curiosity

Recently, researchers from the University of California, Davis conducted a series of experiments to discover what exactly goes on in the brain when our curiosity is aroused. For the study, the researchers had participants rate how curious they were to learn the answers to more than 100 trivia questions, such as "What Beatles single lasted longest on the charts, at 19 weeks?" or "What does the term 'dinosaur' actually mean?" At certain points throughout the study, fMRI scans were carried out to see what was happening in the brain when participants felt particularly curious about the answer to a question.

So what did these experiments reveal? Here are two of the most important findings.

1. Curiosity prepares the brain for learning.

While it might be no big surprise that we're more likely to remember what we've learned when the subject matter intrigues us, it turns out that curiosity also helps us learn information we don't consider all that interesting or important.

The researchers found that, once the subjects' curiosity had been piqued by the right question, they were better at learning and remembering completely unrelated information. One of the study's co-authors, Dr. Matthias Gruber, explains that this is because curiosity puts the brain in a state that allows it to learn and retain any kind of information, like a vortex that sucks in what you are motivated to learn, and also everything around it.

So if a teacher is able to arouse students' curiosity about something they're naturally motivated to learn, they'll be better prepared to learn things that they would normally consider boring or difficult. For instance, if a student struggles with math, personalizing math problems to match their specific interests rather than using generic textbook questions could help them better remember how to go about solving similar math problems in the future.

2. Curiosity makes subsequent learning more rewarding.

Aside from preparing the brain for learning, curiosity can also make learning a more rewarding experience for students.

The researchers found that when the participants' curiosity had been sparked, there was not only increased activity in the hippocampus, which is the region of the brain involved in the creation of memories, but also in the brain circuit that is related to reward and pleasure. This circuit is the same one that lights up when we get something we really like, such as candy or money, and it relies on dopamine, a "feel-good" chemical that relays messages between neurons and gives us a sort of high.

So not only will arousing students' curiosity help them remember lessons that might otherwise go in one ear and out the other, but it can also make the learning experience as pleasurable as ice cream or pocket money. Of course, most teachers already instinctively know the importance of fostering inquisitive minds, but to have science back it up is undeniably satisfying.

Asking the Right Question

Naturally, there are still a few things that remain unclear about curiosity's role in learning. For one thing, scientists have yet to determine its long-term effects. For instance, if a student's curiosity is stimulated at the beginning of a school day, will it help them better absorb information all day long? Another thing the researchers are keen to investigate is why some people are more naturally curious than others, and which factors most influence how curious we are.

For the moment, though, these findings serve as a reminder that there is no such thing as a dumb question, because as cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham notes in his book Why Don't Students Like School?, it's the question that stimulates curiosity -- being told the answer quells curiosity before it can even get going.

So rather than jumping straight into the answers, let's try to start students off with the sort of questions that encourage them to do their own seeking.

What questions tend to spark greater curiosity among your students?

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Why Curiosity Enhances Learning | Edutopia

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"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." -- Albert Einstein It's no secret that curiosity makes learning more effective and enjoyable. Curious students not only ask questions, but also actively seek out the answers.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1yl0MFYzXc

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school kills creativity   ken robinson   YouTube

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http://www.treetopcommons.com/noblehour-blog/2015/7/25/10-ted-talks-that-demonstrate-the-power-of-experiential-learning

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https://www.ted.com/talks/ramsey_musallam_3_rules_to_spark_learning

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Ramsey Musallam: 3 rules to spark learning

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It took a life-threatening condition to jolt chemistry teacher Ramsey Musallam out of ten years of "pseudo-teaching" to understand the true role of the educator: to cultivate curiosity. In a fun and personal talk, Musallam gives 3 rules to spark imagination and learning, and get students excited about how the world works.

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http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-stories/Case-studies/Teachers-as-learners-Inquiry/Teaching-as-inquiry

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http://teachinghistory.org/teaching-materials/teaching-guides/24123

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What Is an "Inquiry Lesson"?

A lesson where students analyze historical evidence in order to form and test hypotheses about past events.

Inquiry lessons introduce students to the "doing" of history. Through using evidence to investigate historical questions, students are given the opportunity to see that history is not just a collection of facts, but rather a rigorously constructed set of arguments. As students encounter new and in some cases contradictory evidence, they are asked to reconsider their initial views, learning that interpretations of the past can change based on the available historical evidence.

Students review historical documents in order to answer a central inquiry question posed by the teacher. After each round of evidence students revisit hypotheses that answer the central question. At the end of the lesson students are asked to settle on a hypothesis and answer the question using evidence.

1. Choose an historical question that is relevant to the topic you are teaching. For example, "Why did the boycott of Montgomery's buses succeed?" or "Why did Teddy Roosevelt oppose the segregation of San Francisco's public schools?"

2. Find and select documents and other sources that offer different perspectives and information regarding the inquiry question. The first document, or set of documents, should confirm students' initial hypotheses, which are often similar to ideas presented in the textbook's narrative or media portrayals of the past. The second round of sources should contradict or challenge the ideas from the documents that the students previously encountered. The next set of sources should further complicate the picture.

Tip: Steps 1 and 2 are recursive. Choosing the inquiry question and the sources that students will investigate to answer that question requires close attention to whether the sources do indeed answer that question. You may need to revise your original question depending on the sources you find or choose different sources.

3. Consider the timing and how long you have to spend on the activity in class. You may want to assign a document for homework the prior night. Make copies of the documents and all other relevant materials. We strongly recommend making a graphic organizer for students to keep track of how each piece of evidence informs their thinking about the inquiry question. (See here for example.)

1. Engage students in the inquiry and provide background information that enables them to form an initial hypothesis. For example, read a vivid historical account or show a short video clip.

2. Pose and explain the inquiry question. Write it on the board.

3. Elicit students' initial ideas and ask them to share their first tentative hypothesis that answers the inquiry question.

4. Present students with historical evidence that addresses the question. Evidence can include documents, images, and charts, as well as other sources of information like a mini-lecture.

5. Students analyze evidence and generate hypotheses.

6. Each session of analyzing evidence is followed by a hypothesis-revision session in which you help students examine their hypotheses, remove those hypothesis that are no longer supported by the data, and add new hypotheses as warranted.

7. Repeat steps 4, 5, and 6 as much as needed based on the number of pieces of evidence you want your students to consider.

8. Closure and Assessment: Ask students to write down the hypothesis they judge best supported by the data. Call it a tentative conclusion that can be believed until new evidence overturns it. Assign a synthetic essay on the topic where students answer the inquiry question using available evidence.

Be sure to ask a question that elicits historical debates, not moral judgments.

Be sure to ask a question that elicits historical debates, not moral judgments. For example, the question "Should the United States have used the atomic bomb?" could be argued without any reference to historical evidence and solely on moral grounds. You want to use a question that requires that students use historical evidence to answer it.

Common formats for historical questions are:

causal questions: "What caused x?"

explanatory questions: "Why did x happen?"

evaluating questions: "Was x a success?"

Be sure to use documents and sources that your students can read and access. Consider using short excerpts or modifying difficult language in documents, especially if you are working with struggling readers. Checkout this guide for tips about making primary sources accessible for all students.

Causality is at the center of many scholarly and public debates about the past. Often we are certain specific events occurred: America declared war on Japan after the Bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Constitution allowed slavery, the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. But the reasons why these events occurred shapes how they are understood.

Textbooks and the media can present a singular cause behind an event. But there are multiple causes of any event, many of which are often overlooked.

This example of an inquiry lesson takes up the following question: Why did Teddy Roosevelt oppose the segregation of San Francisco's public schools?

This lesson plan includes the modified documents and some background information. There is also a graphic organizer that accompanies the lesson.

The first document in this lesson, a speech by Roosevelt, provides an answer likely held by several students, "it is not fair to discriminate." However, as students read the next few documents, Roosevelt's position becomes complicated as he endorses California's right to protest Japanese immigration and the idea that only upper class Japanese should be allowed to immigrate.

As students sift through multiple documents describing Roosevelt's view, they see that there was not necessarily a singular reason why Roosevelt opposed segregation, but multiple reasons.

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What Is an "Inquiry Lesson"? A lesson where students analyze historical evidence in order to form and test hypotheses about past events. Inquiry lessons introduce students to the "doing" of history. Through using evidence to investigate historical questions, students are given the opportunity to see that history is not just a collection of facts, but rather a rigorously constructed set of arguments.

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http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol8/821-marshall.aspx

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http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/inquiry/

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http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/05/20/inquiry-learning-vs-standardized-content-can-they-coexist/

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So how can you, as a teacher, help move the dialogue forward? First, you can focus on becoming a highly-effective project based learning (PBL) teacher. When done well, PBL is the most effective method education has at the moment to introduce and practice inquiry-based education.

But PBL is the near-term solution. The ultimate destination is to align education with the requirements of a process-based world. This means we need to invent and agree on a set of clearly prescribed methods that promote inquiry, permeate the learning environment, and become as embedded in education as the current content standards. The move to integrate 21 st century skills into the curriculum is a start. But to really advance the cause, the following ideas will need to take root.

REDEFINE RIGOR. As the Google-age fully blossoms, the fundamental shift is from information to attitude. The instant, ubiquitous availability of knowledge puts enormous responsibility on the individual, as they try to sift through, discern, apply, and share information. This is not a simple cognitive exercise. Success in this environment requires a mix of self-awareness, empathy, and collaborative skills, as well as grit and self-direction. Eventually, the measure of student performance will be the demonstrated ability to use personal strengths to move gracefully through a connected world. We've started along this path, by the way. Portfolios measure personal growth and achievement; the best collaboration and teamwork rubrics assess empathy; many PBL teachers have found work ethic rubrics to be a great tool for measuring attitude and productivity.
BLEND CRITICAL THINKING, SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEARNING, AND OTHER VALUABLE SKILLS. In the search for better inquiry methods, the gaming industry has much to teach education. A case in point is a recent article by Mark Prensky, a leading games and learning advocate, who suggests reorganizing the curriculum into four areas that blend inquiry and performance. Let's call these the 4 E's: Effective Accomplishment, including portfolios, content mastery, tests, and assessment; Effective Action, including goal setting, persistence, and work ethic; Effective Relationships, including communication, teamwork, and empathy; and Effective Thinking, including critical thinking, creativity, and content acquisition. There are several advantages to developing this framework, chief of which it recognizes that the foundation for today's skills is emotional balance and self-awareness, and it integrates valuable skills into the curriculum core, rather than extending their current status as an add on to academic work.

TEACH INQUIRY SKILLS. Creativity, problem-solving, design thinking, and critical analysis are learnable skills that benefit from intentional instruction. The options are many, starting with exercises in creativity and brainstorming, regular use of protocols to practice sharing and giving feedback on divergent ideas; and consistent assessment of the inquiry process using high quality performance rubrics for problem solving, design or creativity. We've also made inroads here. The eight Mathematical Practices accompanying the CCSS math sequence is an impressive guide to inquiry skills. But so far it's been difficult to locate a missing link: A performance rubric for students that defines their level of performance on each practice.

MAKE COHORTS AND TEAMS THE PRACTICE, NOT THE EXCEPTION. Probably the most deeply embedded norm of industrial education, originating from the 15 th century, is the ideal of the individual scholar. The default mode is to aim teaching at a single student, and assess and recognize accomplishments gained through individual performance. But we must shift this towards

team learning . The collaborative world succeeds through interaction and exchange, and it's important to move towards deep, peer-driven learning and performance. A supportive team that meets regularly during the course of a unit will provide feedback and help each student produce a better individual product. In an inquiry-based classroom, this should be standard practice.

SEE THE BALANCE BETWEEN INQUIRY AND CONTENT AS A DYNAMIC. This dilemma-<Should I teach content or turn students loose to figure out things on their own?-is at the heart of the debate over teacher preparation for the CCSS. Knowing when to teach directly, or allow for problem solving, is a high art. But that is what inquiry-based education demands. For some content, the best choice is <just teach it. Other topics can't be taught, but must be learned through discovery, trial and error, or prototyping-all of which require more time. In an inquiry-based world, lesson design allows for fluidity, mini-lessons, and ample time for process. Success relies on whether teachers have the ability-and give themselves permission-to move back and forth between content and process.

THE CIRCLE OF CONTROL. The chief obstacle to an inquiry-based system is us. To give up a content-based curriculum, with its deep traditions, proven techniques for controlling behavior and outcomes, and dominating, standardized regimen, feels like giving a 14-year old the keys to the car and a full tank of gas. It's scary. The shift into the next, non-industrial phase of schooling is a psychological issue, not just a logistical one. The world that is opening up requires faith that something new, and better, is being born, but in the short term, it can feel like it's falling apart. But I'll leave you with two thoughts. First, it's happening, whether we agree or not. Second, we'll need good minds to figure it out, meaning more of those young people in your classroom who have been well trained in the art and skill of inquiry.
Thom Markham is a speaker, writer, psychologist, school redesign consultant, and the author of the Project Based Learning Design and Coaching Guide: Expert tools for inquiry and innovation for K-12 educators . To download the tools for inquiry, go to the PBL tools page on

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Inquiry Learning Vs. Standardized Content: Can They Coexist?

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So how can you, as a teacher, help move the dialogue forward? First, you can focus on becoming a highly-effective project based learning (PBL) teacher. When done well, PBL is the most effective method education has at the moment to introduce and practice inquiry-based education. But PBL is the near-term solution.

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Math and Inquiry: The Importance of Stmble

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Math and Inquiry: The Importance of Stmble

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http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/02/03/math-and-inquiry-the-importance-of-letting-students-stumble/

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For subjects like math and foreign language, which are traditionally taught in a linear and highly structured context, using more open-ended inquiry-based models can be challenging. Teachers of these subjects may find it hard to break out of linear teaching style because the assumption is that students can't move to more complicated skills before mastering basic ones. But inquiry learning is based on the premise that, with a little bit of structure and guidance, teachers can support students to ask questions that lead them to learn those same important skills -- in ways that are meaningful to them.

This model, however, can be especially hard to follow in public school classrooms tied to pre-set curricula. Class time, class size, assessments, resources, student buy-in, administrative pressures, and students' learned helplessness are just a few of the reasons why it can be challenging to create learning experiences that are deep, authentic, and driven by inquiry, according to participants at EduCon 2.6 hosted by Science Leadership Academy (SLA), a public high school in Philadelphia recently.

Science Leadership Academy, which has an established track record as an inquiry-based school, has just opened a second campus in Philadelphia called the Beeber school, whose teachers are still adapting to the inquiry model. With one freshmen class and a new crop of teachers still adjusting to project-based and inquiry driven approaches to learning, the school is a good model for learning how these complex ideas flesh out.

"As much as we can say it's okay for students to fail within the class, if they don't pass the test at the end of the year, it's suddenly not okay."

"You have to spend a lot of time and a lot of energy supporting kids to unlearn how they've been taught to learn for the majority of their lives," said Marina Isakowitz, a ninth-grade math teacher at Beeber. Students at both SLA campuses come from public middle schools across the city and enter with varying levels of proficiency and very little experience with inquiry learning.

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Math and Inquiry: The Importance of Letting Students Stumble

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For subjects like math and foreign language, which are traditionally taught in a linear and highly structured context, using more open-ended inquiry-based models can be challenging. But inquiry learning is based on the premise that, with a little bit of structure and guidance, teachers can support students to ask questions that lead them to learn those same important skills -- in ways that are meaningful to them.

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How to Design a Classroom Built on Inquiry

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How to Design a Classroom Built on Inquiry

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http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/09/08/how-to-design-a-classroom-built-on-inquiry-openness-and-trust/

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I've also discovered I need to teach the difference between collaboration and cooperation. Most students have been taught to cooperate. "Play nice in the sandbox." Collaboration is an entirely different thing. Many adults don't know how to collaborate well.
1. START WITH ONE UNIT
Start with creating one inquiry unit in one subject. You can jump in and change everything at once like I did, but that's slightly crazy. Instead, if you design one unit in one subject, at the end of each day, or week, you can analyze what worked and what didn't. While teaching doesn't always leave a lot of time for luxuries like reflection, it really is the key to figuring out inquiry learning, and as the teacher, it's one of your most important roles.

Sometimes you may not understand why certain things aren't working. Ask your students. I'm often surprised by how much they know and how adept they are at articulating what they need.
Two of the best resources I've found for creating an inquiry classroom are Carol Kuhlthau's work and Alberta Learning's Guide to Inquiry Learning.

If you don't know how to create an inquiry classroom, ask me. I'm happy to help. You can begin by posting comments here. If you need resources, I can probably point you to some. Over the past year, I've had the opportunity to email, Skype and, if distance allows, have teachers, administrators and superintendents visit my classroom to see what we do.
2. TALK ABOUT LEARNING
Talk to your students about their learning - a lot. Especially in the beginning, I talk to my students about why my classroom is structured differently than every other class in our school. I show them Ken Robinson's talk about how the 20th century school system doesn't really prepare students anymore. I also show them Chris Lehmann's TEDx talk emphasizing how education is broken and Karl Fisch's Did You Know?

I tell my students that essentially I'm preparing them for jobs that don't currently exist, that will use technology which hasn't been invented yet, to fix problems we're not currently aware of. They get the point. It's about developing skills and habits of learning, and we use content to do that.

But I also talk to my students about stuff like how their brain works, and how neural connections need to be made. That often, in order for students to learn something new, it needs to be attached to things they already know. Just before the recent break, during the last week of school, we talked about cognitive dissonance and Vygotsky's zone of proximal development. They like to know there's a reason for the way they feel when they don't "get it." And they like to know that everyone's zone of development is different. In fact, they were amazed to find out everyone's brain is different.

And, yes, I use the big words. I simply explain what they mean. I don't use them to sound smart. I use them because it makes my students feel smart; most of our society doesn't treat our students like they're capable of understanding or doing much. I do.
3. MAKE TECH WORK FOR YOU
Embed technology in ways that are authentic to the learning process. The first tools that I teach my students are Google Docs, Diigo or Delicious to bookmark their research, and Symbaloo to house their tools.

Experience has taught me that the first day I introduce a class to Google Docs, we will get nothing done. To them, it's the most amazing thing ever. They usually spend most of the class typing back and forth to each other in the doc. No big deal. However, eventually, my students open Google Docs without me telling them to. I have students who literally use them for every lab, essay, and assignment. And the ability for a group to work on and edit the same document at the same time, more than makes up for the initial class we lose.

The social media tools we used to show our learning in our slavery unit seemed like the most natural and logical tools to use. As a learning community, we want our learning to extend beyond the four walls of our classroom. So we have a discussion, or likely multiple discussions, about what that should look like. We also want our projects to have "real world" implications. What's more real world than advocacy against modern-day slavery using social media?

Essentially these are the two criteria we use to assess the product we're going to create. How do we extend our learning beyond our classroom - and how can what we do here make a difference to the real world? Our tool selection is guided by the answers to these questions.
4. EXPECT TO HIT THE WALL
Remember that inquiry learning is an emotional process. Each stage of learning has specific emotions attached to it, and at some point, you and your students will likely hit the wall. That's normal.

I've found that we need to talk more as an inquiry class. My role is to be well aware of how my students are doing emotionally, especially when we're dealing with a weighty, overwhelming topic like slavery. While this may not matter much in a traditional classroom, it can completely blow apart a community learning through inquiry.

I won't promise you that any of this will be easy. It's not. You'll likely have days when you wonder why you ever started it. But trust me, it's worth it.
This article originally appeared on Shelley Wright's blog Wright's Room where she explores her experiences in the classroom and ruminations on the future of learning. Wright teaches high school in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.

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How to Design a Classroom Built on Inquiry, Openness and Trust

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I've also discovered I need to teach the difference between collaboration and cooperation. Most students have been taught to cooperate. "Play nice in the sandbox." Collaboration is an entirely different thing. Many adults don't know how to collaborate well. 1. START WITH ONE UNIT Start with creating one inquiry unit in one subject.

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https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/reasons-for-inquiry-based-teaching

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Discussion and Supporting Materials

Thought starters

1. How does the inquiry teaching model lend itself to differentiation?

2. What role does diversity play in the inquiry approach?

3. How do students use evidence when participating in inquiry-based discussions?

School Details

Urban Academy Laboratory High School
317 East 67th Street
New York NY 10065

Data Provided By:

Teachers

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Inquiry-Based Teaching: The Inquiry Approach

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Four teachers at Urban Academy Laboratory High School talk about how they use the inquiry approach in their teaching. History teacher Adam Grumbach talks about how using the inquiry model is a helpful strategy for teaching students of mixed abilities while History teacher Avram Barlowe discusses how the inquiry model is enriched by diverse participants.

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http://www.inquiryschools.net/page3/page3.html

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https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/inquiry-protocol-nvps

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Inquiry teams are a great way to improve lessons and teaching practice. Watch an inquiry in action as they go over a lesson where students had issues, and how they discussed ways to teach the lesson in a way so students understand the concepts better.