This week was dedicated to learning more about inquiry based learning and its role in the classroom. While I've heard of this idea before, I haven't done more with it than just hear about it. After learning more this week, I feel more confident in my thoughts about inquiry based learning and am really becoming a fan of the practice. It is certainly something that will take some time to prepare for, but the effects in the long run seem to be surely worth the time spent planning.
One of the most important things I learned this week were the "4 Steps of Inquiry Based Learning." These steps are a great guide for teachers new to the idea (cough cough, me!). I found these steps in a helpful article on Edutopia, linked here.
Those 4 steps are:
1. Driving Question: Motivate students to come up with questions that they are dying to know the answer to.
2. Research: Provide class time for research. Model safe search practices and provide assistance and support as needed.
3. Presentation: Time to communicate the research findings. Students can create a Google Slides presentation, infographic, etc. to share their work.
4. Reflection: Here is where students think about their learning process and how they accomplished what they did.
These steps for inquiry based learning seem easy enough to understand and implement. As with many classroom strategies and practices, there is much flexibility with how a strategy is implemented. For example, there is not one exact way to teach guided reading or guided math. So my burning question is, does inquiry based learning have the flexibility to look different in every classroom?
References:
-(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.cii.illinois.edu/InquiryPage/inquiry/definition.html
-Wolpert-Gawron, H. (2016, August 11). What the Heck Is Inquiry-Based Learning? Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/what-heck-inquiry-based-learning-heather-wolpert-gawron