Inquiry Learning: Definition and Mini-Lesson Ideas

To me, inquiry learning is a teacher's opportunity (and ability) to let go of the reigns. Sometimes, we feel like we aren't doing our jobs if we set students free to learn and discover on their own. However, we are actually holding them back from exploring and gaining their own authentic knowledge when we spoon feed them all of the information we want them to know. Letting go of the reigns can be tough though, especially with the pressure of preparing for standardized tests, but while inquiry learning may take a tad bit longer and a little extra preparation, it will allow for students to truly take control of their learning and, therefore, gain understanding that will stay with them.

In the language arts classroom, inquiry learning can be brought about in many ways. I think one of the ways that I like best, both as a student and teacher, is unguided reading discussion, reflection, and response. Getting the chance to think critically about a text without any goals that must be reached or questions that must be answered is a wonderful way to not only get in touch with a good story or passage, but also a good way to get in touch with one's self. Reacting to your reading often causes the reader to connect with the reading on a more personal-level. As I begin to plan for next year, I would like to do more of this with my students. 

I have decided to use figurative language as the focus for my mini-lessons in this class. Figurative language is one of my favorite things to teach, and even though the thought of doing away with all of the fun, whole-class lessons I have prepared for this unit makes my heart hurt, I know that I can find a way to create and inquiry-based mini-unit that will be just as fun and engaging for my students. How, you ask? By sticking to these principles:

Authentic: I will make this learning experience authentic for my students by relating the unit topic to their lives. One idea that I have already come up with is having my students set up twitter accounts (using their school email) and having them tweet any examples of figurative language that they hear or say in real-life throughout the course of the unit, using the hashtag #notliterally so that I and other students can see their tweets. This makes the learning more authentic by helping students learn to recognize figurative language in real life, as well as having students recognize how often they use figurative language in their day-to-day conversations. 

Deeper Understanding: Rather than just having my students know what figurative language is and what the definition of each type is, I want them to have a deeper understanding of figurative language by recognizing how prominent it is in our lives as well as the importance of it.

Assessment: I will assess my students using several formal and informal assessments throughout the unit. However, more importantly I want to ensure that they have a way to self-assess their work and understanding.

Technology: My students will use technology throughout the unit. Their use of twitter will be crucial, as it will engage students in their learning. Liz Keren-Kolb says that to engage them in their learning technology must "cause a shift in students' behavior from passive to active learning." My students will be active in their learning as they are on the lookout for examples of our content in their daily lives.

Performances of Understanding: Students will show their understanding by creating a multimedia project that uses examples of each type of figurative language,

Connecting with Experts: This part I haven't quite got an idea for yet. I know that students can read a text and find examples of figurative language, but actually meeting with an author or writer to discuss how they use figurative language in their own writing will be a bit more difficult. 

Student Success: As I said before, I want to develop a way for students to keep track of their own learning and understanding of the content so that both they and I can ensure that they are being successful in learning the content.

Ethical Citizenship: Tying this in is going to be a bit tricky too, but I'll come up with something! 

Thinking Back

Blog Post #5

In my first blog post, I said that my goal for this class would be to gain some ideas and techniques for incorporating inquiry learning into my 6th grade English Language Arts classroom. As I have been completing my coursework, reading our course resources, and discussing with my classmates, I feel that I am progressing toward meeting my goal at a pretty good pace. In my first year of teaching, I was always very quick to just give my students the information that they needed to learn, whether through notes or handouts. I rarely let them discover the content on their own. While I don't believe that my strategies as a teacher were exactly ineffective, I think it's important to have a lot of strategies and options in the classroom, though, and inquiry learning is one strategy that I definitely want to try out.

In order to institute inquiry learning in my class, I have to ensure that I am also practicing effective information fluency skills with a growth mindset. Our readings this week listed key characteristics related to having a growth mindset when it comes to information fluency, and these are skills that I will need to keep in mind in order to achieve my goal of effectively incorporating inquiry learning techniques in my class. You see, if I want my students do well with inquiry learning, I must be sure that both my students and myself are using information fluency skills, or else the entire strategy is a bust.

When giving my students an inquiry learning task to complete, I will want to ensure that I have meet these criteria.  In the article "The 21st Century Information Fluency Cycle," the first characteristic of someone who is practicing information fluency must be able to locate the information efficiently. This relates to my goal for this class in two ways. From a teacher's viewpoint, when creating inquiry learning tasks for my students, I must find resources for my students that are on topic as well as on their skill level. If I provide them with resources that are difficult for them to understand, some students may give up. From a student perspective, they will need to have this skill when taking part in inquiry learning to ensure that they are finding the information that is required. They will need additional skills that I will need to teach them in order to do this, such as finding the key concepts within the question that is posed to them, as well as creating effective search queries.

The next major characteristic that both I and my students will need is the ability to evaluate the information that is found. For the teacher, this important because I do not want to give students information that is in correct or unreliable. For students, the skill of evaluating information for accuracy and unreliability is not just an important skills in the classroom, but in the real-world as well. Next, we will need to make sure that we are using the information ethically. For both teacher and student, it is important that we give credit to authors and cite sources that we use in our research.

Whilst working to achieve these characteristics, it is important to keep a growth mindset. As we grow as teachers and learners, incorporating new skills and strategies to help us be more effective in our research. For me, that new strategy at this point is inquiry learning. By learning about this new strategy and how I can incorporate it into my classroom, I am keeping a growth mindset. I must almost keep a growth mindset when it comes to information fluency. I will do this by continuing to grow and change in the way that I research, broadening my research my understanding and techniques for researching so that I can be more effective.

Letting Go

As a (former!) first year teacher, I can see where Grant Wiggins, author of the article "Great Teaching Means Letting Go," is coming from. I was a helicopter-teacher. ANY TIME a student said "Miss Jackson, I need help," I was there, ready to help them find the answer, when in actuality, what I should have been doing is simply pointing them in the direction of the answer. I wanted so badly to make sure that I was teaching my students everything within our sixth grade standards, that I often didn't let them learn or figure out anything for themselves (which, in my opinion, is the most meaningful type of learning). When Wiggins says "far too many teachers prompt for a specific reading strategy and provide guided “independent practice” in using each strategy but spend nowhere near enough time watching quietly (and later de-briefing) kids as they handle a reading passage cold, to determine which strategies they used and why" I saw myself, because I know that I never did that, and I'm sorry that I didn't. I could have been much more effective as a teacher if I had only asked "What sort of reading strategies work for you?" rather than just assuming that all of my students would fit into a mold that I had learned through college courses. Next year, I will be sure to ask my students what strategies they use to help them understand and retain information they read so that I can use that information to direct my teaching and ensure that my students are able to be autonomous.

Chris Lehmann's video also focuses on autonomous, or inquiry, learning. Lehmann discusses the role of technology in inquiry learning much more than Wiggins did. I agree with Lehmann that technology-infusion is a must for this generation of learners. He says "The this is a technology- infusion but more importantly, the this is empowering, inquiry-driven education." I completely agree. Inquiry-;learning is the main goal, and it can be achieved by technology-based learning, but it doesn't have to be. My school is not a 1-to-1 school, so technology is scarce. Teachers have to book technology weeks in advanced in order to ensure a chance at a computer lab or a Chromebook cart, but this doesn't mean that inquiry-learning is out of reach for us. A little more challenging to achieve? Sure! But not impossible!

After reading this article and watching the video, I have come to this conclusion: I agree that technology-based learning is important, especially for the up-and-coming generations who cannot remember a time without technology, but I don't think it is impossible to plan inquiry-based learning without technology.

Reflective Searching

As a honest-to-God Millenial, I would be lying if I said that I am not part of the Google Generation as well. While I do remember doing research "the old-fashioned way" by thumbing through encyclopedias and other printed sources, it was only when our teachers told us that we had to use at least one paper source that I would ever crack open a book for research (but I've always been of the opinion that the internet is for information, and books should be for pleasure). Ever since I can remember, however, online searches have been the fastest, easiest way to access the information that I was looking for, and therefore the only tool that I needed. While I don't still hold on to the belief that it is the only tool I need, I do still use it more than any other resource, simply because it's sooooo easy. I carry Google around in my pocket everywhere I go.

However, I will also admit that I have been spoiled by this. I find myself frustrated if the information I want is not on the first Google page and I am forced to go to the second. I've gotten spoiled, and lazy. Instead of reading an entire article, I will use the "find" tool on my computer to search for key words. In these ways, I'm much like the pre-teens that I teach, except that they refuse to go on the second Google page, deciding instead that there must not be any information about their topic on the internet.

From the article, "Information Behavior of the Researcher of the Future," I found that I am the type of researcher who needs to be entertained (yet another reason why I am the classic example of the Google Generation). When I am conducting research, I often look first for articles that are going to be entertaining rather than strictly about what I am researching. My hope is that I will find the information I am looking for while simultaneously enjoying what I am reading. However, I realize that sometimes, more educational reading is not always going to keep me entertained. In order to keep me from putting myself into a filter bubble, I need to look at resources that might not be the most "entertaining" but may be more informative than the articles that I normally read.

Post #2

The common characteristic that I have found between these articles and video is that they all center around technology and it's uses to find, use, respond to, and share information. The difference lies in the how they approach the discussion. In his blog post, Bryan Alexander discusses his routine for finding, responding to, and sharing information, giving details about each step. Karen Lirenman and Tina Barseghian both reflect on digital learning in their own classrooms, but in different ways. Lirenman discusses her own digital learning and how she is transitioning from simply being digital literate to being fluent digitally, while Barseghian discusses her students digital learning, and gives tips on how to help your students become better digital learners. The video, titled InfoWhelm and Information Fluency, discusses how easy it is to find tons of information (an epidemic titled infowhelm), but that the importance for students should not be on how well they find the information, but instead on if they understand and know how to use it efficiently (which leads back to information fluency). I found the video to be the outlier of the group, not only in it's presentation, but also in the way that it addressed the topic, looking at the negative effects of our ability to easily access information.

The point that stuck out to me most within these articles was a tip from Barseghian. The tip says to "Not Be Boring," which seems like a no-brainer, but actually makes sense. I know that sometimes, when I am being lazy or running short on time with an assignment, I will turn in something that meets the criteria, but that I know is not exactly engaging. My students will do this too, and I often don't say anything because they followed directions. However, meaningful learning, both in a traditional classroom setting and a digital learning environment, only truly happens when students are engaged. Therefore, one of my goals throughout this course will be to ensure that I find information and create products that not only meet my professors requirements, but also engage my professor, my peers, and myself.

Post #1

Before the end of this class, I would like to have a better understanding of techniques for inquiry learning that I can use both in my English Language Arts class and also in the media center once I become a school librarian. I enjoy learning about new forms of technology and online tools that can be used in my classroom, and so I look forward to learning some of those things from my classmates throughout the course of this class.