Getting to GREAT Questions for Inquiry: Talking with your students draws out their best intentions

Parts of this blog published in the book Guided Inquiry Design in Action:Elementary School.  

In an inquiry unit on waves, a group of fourth grade students generated the following list of questions. The questions were documented in a collaborative Google Document at the end of the Explore phase in the Guided Inquiry Design process. 

Student Chat - Sound Wave Questions

1.     How are waves created? 2.     In what ways do waves affect human beings? 3.     How do we harness waves? 4.     Why can’t we see waves with our naked eye? 5.     What’s the point of waves? 6.     What makes sound waves waver? 7.     How do sound waves (as in music) make us feel? 8.     How did humans find out about waves? 9.     How many waves are started in a day? 10. Do people always use waves? 11. What creates waves? 12. Do animals use waves? 13. What makes waves? 14. Will people ever see waves? 15. Does electricity carry waves? 16. Do people carry waves?  17. What start waves? 18. Can waves be dangerous? 19. Can sound waves kill people?! 20. How are waves so dangerous? 21. How much noise would you need to make your hearing worse? 22. Can you make waves by just tapping anything? 23. How many ways are there to make a wave? 24. How did people discover waves? 25. Is there a way to see waves? 26. How big can waves be? How small can waves be? 27. How fast can waves go? 28. How do sound waves get into our ears seriously?! 29. Are waves dangerous?! !!!!!!!!! 30. How are waves invented?  31. Why do we have waves? 32. Are waves different? 33. How many waves types do scientist think there are?

34. What are waves made of? 35. Why do we need waves? 36. Why are waves so important? 37. How are waves made? 38. On an average, how fast do sound waves travel? 39. Why are waves so apart/different? 40. How and why do waves move in different directions? 41. How are waves made? 42. Are waves fast? 43. Who invented waves? 44. Are waves slow? 45. Why are waves so important? 46. How are waves made?  47. Why do we need waves everywhere? 48. Why do we have waves? 49. How do waves move?  50. Where are waves? 51. How many waves come a year? 52. How many waves are started in a day? 53. How fast can waves go? 54. Why do we need  waves everywhere? 55. Why do we have waves? 56. How do waves move?  57. How are waves made?  58. Where are waves? 59. Why do we need waves? 60. Do wave do more than they’re supposed to? 61. Do waves help people or animals? 62. Do waves hurt animals? 63. Why do animals use physical sound waves? 64. Can animals hear waves? 65. Are  waves invisible? 66. How fast do waves go?  67. How do you make waves 68. Who makes waves moves and how? Thanks to @LansfordsLines and her Learning Team for these ??'s

At all levels (K-12), through Guided Inquiry Design, students benefit from conferences with the teacher or librarian when transitioning from the Explore to Identify phases. The purpose of this student conference is clarifying. A quick conference with just the right timing helps the student bring life to their seemingly simple questions and transforms them into more complex and interesting ones.

At first glance, some of these questions (above) might seem better than others for inquiry and research. But, the goal of Guided Inquiry Design is that our students choose their own path for inquiry and research. Each of the above questions has the potential to be a worthy inquiry question. A short conference with the Learning Team clarifies meaning, draws out student interest, and provides direction for the Gather phase.

Here are some sample questions from the list above that students chose, and how members of the Learning Team conferred with the student to clarify the ideas. Each conference concludes with the student ready to move forward into the Gather phase. Notice how the Learning Team goes into the conferences with an Inquiry Stance, not a judgmental tone, but one of authentic curiosity for students’ ideas. Notice also that these are short conversations not requiring more than a few minutes of time.

***If you have time, end these conferences by engaging in a quick Google (or catalogue) search with each student after they write their question down. That way, they have a clear direction for key words, some resources, and their immediate next steps increasing independence in the Gather phase. 

 FOUR IMPORTANT THINGS TO REMEMBER

There are four important things for the Learning Team to think about when entering into this conference.

1.     Students have good intentions. We need to reach inside our students’ intentions. Asking questions helps students to clarify the connections they are making. A conversation like the ones above draw out the information the student used to arrive at their question and elaborate on their thinking to get more specific.

2.     No question is a bad question.  Yes, some questions that elementary school students come up with are “right there questions” that have easy answers. But even those questions can hold the seeds of deeper thinking. If you take the time to dig a little bit into student thinking, conferences can really help students tell us more about the great thinking behind those seemingly simple questions.

3.     Students interests drive their meaning making.  Students will have more to tell you if you ask them, “what interested you about this?”, rather than asking, “why did you pick this question?”. Focusing on their interest takes the pressure and judgment off and opens the conversation to their Third Space.

4.     Paraphrasing students shows listening and support. Listening is a key to clarifying. Paraphrasing what students say will help you to be a better listener in the conference.  Using “OK so” or “Oh so” as you talk with students will help you to paraphrase their words so they can “sign off” with their intention.  (See examples above.)

Student questions are the core of inquiry-based learning! Hope this helps you get GREAT questions from your students, the ones that they are interested in and spark deeper learning through research.

Cheers!

Leslie Maniotes, PhD 

Learning in Trust and Trust in Learning

It's a real struggle for many teachers to let go of content and control. It can be hard to let go to trust your students to know that they have the best intentions at heart.  But the more you can do this, the deeper the students will delve into their learning.  

Read and imagine this exchange between Eve, Poppy, Pam, and Lizzie (pseudonyms), a smart group of fourth grade girls of mixed ethnicity in a Title One school in Colorado.

The scene- the students are in Inquiry Circles discussing the book they are reading, The Watsons Go to Birmingham:1963 (Curtis). In this part of the conversation they are examining characters in the text while learning about the civil rights era in the United States.

Here, they wonder about Bryon the older brother in the story. The girls discuss whether or not he can be trusted, or is telling the truth.  In the beginning of the conversation the teacher (Ramona) is not at the group. She enters about half way through and contributes to the conversation. She is monitoring more than one Inquiry Circle and dips in and out of the meetings occurring around the classroom. Eve's job in the Inquiry Circle is to encourage making connections to the text, and so she begins:

Eve:        Does anyone have a connection to that?  Byron trouble.  Does one of you?  (Pointing her pencil at each of the three other girls.)

Poppy:   Yes.

Pam:       Can you tell your connection?  Lizzie, you go first.

Lizzie:    How like my brother every time- 'cause when we got our bunk beds, I got to sleep on the top. And he was like, “On the bottom is better!”  And it’s not!  Because it’s all like you could hear the person move on the top, and he was just fooling around with me just to try to go up there.

Poppy:   My connection is from my big brother, Ben.  He’s thirteen.  And when I try to call my mom’s he acts like he’s not there. And then she actually calls out his name. He’s like really there and so she’s like Ben go away!

Ramona: And so you gotta judge him out a little bit.

Poppy:   And so he usually does that every day that I usually see him. And so now I don’t even believe him when he’s trying to tell the truth because-

Ramona: So you don’t trust him.

Poppy:   Yea.  It’s kind of like  “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”

Ramona:  So, do you think Byron’s gonna be like that?  I assume you’re talking about Byron even though I wasn’t here.

Poppy:   Yea.

Eve:        (Raises her hand to speak) Well, one time I was about six years old and my brother- I used to sleep with my brother, because I was afraid of the dark. And one time he told me to go get him a glass of milk with the light on.  He turned the light off and he’s like there’s a monster coming for you that just ran under the bed. So now I don’t trust him anymore.

Ramona: Sometimes, it’s hard to trust your big brothers and sisters.

Poppy:    'Cause they always try to fool you around and try to make you believe. 

First of all, what's notable in this scenario is that these 4th grade girls know how to "do" an Inquiry Circle on their own. They draw each other in for comment, do not hog the conversational floor, and they build on each others ideas. It's a real conversation. They are able to dig into this character collectively and by the end they show they really "get" Byron and his motivations.

Secondly what is notable is how the teacher assumes the best in her students. Rather than assume they are off task with their discussion of the connections to their families, she assumes that they ARE talking about the text. She knows that it was Bryon, in the book, that they must be referring to in their connections, even if Byron's name is not yet mentioned. The teacher's preparation for today's Inquiry Circles is evident in her knowledge of the book, its characters, and what the students read for this meeting. This preparation allowed her to drop into the conversation and guide them fluidly.  But, that preparation at home the night before was not enough.  Here, her preparedness is clearly paired with her trust in the girls ability to have an academic conversation about the text on their own. She prepared them for this and now she can trust that the conversations are good in that space. And she is right! That is the art of teaching.

This three minute interchange is a powerful example of the art of teaching.  Ramona accomplished so much in this short interchange.  She gently brings them back to the text with positive intention, and got an affirming response from Pam. She affirmed, to the girls, that they were on the right track by engaging in real conversation with them. She validated their third space interactions (it's hard to trust your big brothers and sisters).  And, she checked and confirmed that the goal of the conversation was directly related back to the book. All of this was done in a way that kept the conversation going, and built rapport with her students through the learning.

This example gives us a look into the classroom of an expert teacher, who has mastered that art. She trusts that they want to learn. She affirms their contributions, and validates their connections to the work.  It sounds simpler than it is.  But it is definitely something to strive for as we develop our own art.

If I were to assess this collaboration on a Common Core Rubric, these girls would be all scored as advanced.  And the teacher... well, she's pretty amazing!

Inquiry is IMMERSIVE learning

So, yesterday I was working on writing the Elementary book in the Guided Inquiry Design series.  I was working with some lessons on wave energy for fourth grade. (Sent to me from a rock star librarian, through my work with the wonderful educators of Norman, Oklahoma) Throughout the day, I was immersing myself in what the learners would do in this unit, in what order these activities fell, and how the order and content would impact their understanding and in turn their ability to craft excellent inquiry questions on the concept to pursue further. (Instructional DESIGN) Working in this way, viewing the videos, examining the experiments, and thinking of the timing of it all, IMMERSED me in the concept of waves and the specific content of light, water, and sound waves, much like it would do for our students. I was thinking really hard about why kids might even want to care about this. I believe that it's important for the learning to be relevant (third space).

After a long day of work, my daughter got home from school and we decided to take a break and go paddle boarding on the local lake.  We had been kayaking recently and decided to try out paddle boarding for the first time. Since they rent them at our local recreation center run lake, we thought we would take them out to enjoy the indian summer weather while it lasted.  It was hard to balance and stand the first time, I was a bit wobbly and unsure. But as my comfort increased, I began to enjoy the beauty of my surroundings.

While I am working on balancing my body on top of this board, immersed in the experience, the beautiful breathtaking views of the sun setting over the Rockies to my west, I had an epiphany.

I had been immersed in the concept of waves all day, playing with the ideas and experiments, watching the videos and in this moment on my paddle board,  EVERYTHING around me connected to that unit of study.

Motorboats were speeding by with wake boarders creating waves. The waves were upsetting my balance and caused me to steady my board. The ducks were making ripples in the water that eventually lapped the shore.  If you are in water, there are waves.  Waves have power, you feel their power when you are on a paddle board and your balance is at stake!

Then I looked to my west at the setting sun.  The light rays were filtering through various holes on the clouds affecting where the light fell and how the sun's energy was directed.  Light rays were being presented to me.

And then there were these loons, who would disappear in the water to pop up again in another place. They were calling their mates with an odd crying sound.  Sound waves were traveling to my ears.

Through opening to the moment, I realized that inquiry based learning, when done well, and when learners are open to the learning through an inquiry stance, provides an immersive experience into life.  Mindfulness, if you will.  If you allow it, as you learn, you will see your world with new eyes. Excellently designed inquiry based learning can provide our students with a unique and new lens with which to see the world.

If we can recognize this immersion through inquiry, we should ask our students about the connections they are making in the world.  Help them to be open to what the world offers them by asking, "What connections did you make to waves last night?  Did you interact with any waves, when, how.... "

Through inquiry based learning in school, all of our lives are enriched!  We can show our students to use the immersive experience of GID to OPEN their eyes to experience the world with new information and understanding. That is what learning, true learning, is all about. Isn't it?

The Wonder Wheel

Guided Inquiry and the Wonder Wheel

I love that people are so creative and like to synthesize their thoughts into maps that support the work they do.

Here is a research model from West Cary that supports teachers and librarians in research.  It's pretty comprehensive. I call it the WonderWheel.  It includes details about how to learn through research and some great ideas at a conceptual level of inquiry.

West Cary Instructional Resources (Where I found the model)
Resources for the model

My life has a sound track- many times when I have an idea it connects to a song (see my last post for another musical link).  The cool thing about a blog is that you can bring all those pieces together in one place.  And so for your musical enjoyment, I give you Dan Zanes WonderWheel. It's the soundtrack for this blogpost. I enjoy all kinds of music and have really enjoyed Dan Zanes with my daughter. You should check them out!

Back to this model... It has everything- evaluation in the center, student indicators, teaching tools for each part and big ideas that shape each stage in this Wonder Wheel!  So Kudos to the West Cary Middle School in Cary, NC.

As an author of Guided Inquiry and Guided Inquiry Design, I see clear alignment with this wheel and our phases of Guided Inquiry Open, Immerse, Explore and Identify in the Wonder section, Gather, Create in Investigate; Create in Synthesize and Create, Share, and Evaluate in Express.  It's interesting how much attention is spent in the Create phase through this model. Create is explored in depth recognizing what it takes to shift to new understandings. In Guided Inquiry we think of Create more as creating new understandings than creating a product. This model reflects that kind of thinking as well and values the work it takes to do so.

Guided Inquiry emphasizes the Open, Immerse and Explore phases mainly because so many educators rush these phases as they don't recognize the amazing pay off when focused time is spent in the beginning that later enables creation and learning. The traditional research assignment completely ignores these early and essential phases.  I think some of these items in create happen earlier as well, such as rich academic vocabulary development.  The Wonder Wheel asks to "tap prior knowledge" but doesn't make the commitment to build background information together as we suggest in Guided Inquiry.  This important step helps students to generate informed questions for deeper learning through the rest of the process.

In our new edition of Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st Century , we describe how the writing process connects to the inquiry process. The complexity of create in this model can be explained by that complex nature of construction of new understandings that occurs in that Create phase of Guided Inquiry.

It's interesting to see how different people visualize the inquiry process and how it weaves in so many different kinds of learning.  Always a fun mind puzzle for me to make connections to our work and implementation factors of Guided Inquiry Design.

From Strong Roots and Connections to Others We Grow

Digging into the roots 

I've been down and out the last two weeks with an injured knee and now a virus, but a little beam of light came to me through an email.  A library student at central North Carolina University emailed me because she was doing a biography on me for a class.  What a delight and surprise.

The assignment was an interesting one and came out of her library class reading our first book, Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st Century (2007). The names are all researchers that we included in the text.

ASSIGNMENT # 3 – Guided Inquiry Theorists and Researchers
Choose one of these personalities and provide the background and principles that these individuals used to impact 21^st century schools.  
Your textbook will provide preliminary information but additional resources should be used to discuss their contributions to Guided Inquiry.  
Personalities:  John Dewey, Keith Curry Lance, Jerome Bruner, Louise Limberg, Vygotsky, Piaget, J. Donham, K. Bishop, Carol Kuhlthau, Diane Oberg, D. Elkind, Violet Harada, J. Yoshina,  L. Maniotes
  
No more than two students may report on the same personality.  Sign up on a first-come, first-serve basis HERE on Discussion Board.  Presentation should be submitted to the thread where you listed the person you selected.   Submit a PowerPoint presentation with 10 – 15 slides on your chosen personality ...

So she emailed me directly when she found little biographical information on me on the internet.  She thought she was imposing on me with her questions, but I was happy to respond. However, it wasn't until she asked me some real specifics that I got digging a little deeper myself into my own history to my roots.  She asked,
In working on my project about Guided Inquiry and your role in it, I find I have a questions that I have not been able to answer. If you have a moment I would love to pick your brain.

1. What event or influence from your early career pushed you in the direction of guided inquiry learning?
2. Were there any students, fellow teachers or administrators who pushed you in the GI direction?
3. Did you face any resistance?

These questions gave me pause.  And I began to reach back farther than my Third Space research into my own teaching and learning about how to teach.  I enjoyed the journey, and so I thought it might be worth sharing here. Here was my answer to her questions.

Well, I went to Guilford College as an undergraduate student of education.  Our program there really highlighted the teaching of the whole child.  We were taught to teach through an inquiry lens in a way having students ask questions about objects, as they investigate.  As I went into a classroom of my own, I found these short inquiries engaging to students, but it wasn’t quite enough.  I knew with more attention and time inquiry like that could get students to deeper learning.

I grew up with some understanding of my mother’s theory as she was doing her doctoral research while I was in and completing high school.  So I began to wonder about how elementary students could take on more of that kind of research and how it might look if it started with inquiry like the ones I had in my classroom.  I always felt that teachers had an opportunity to take students to deeper learning than was often happening and I felt there was a system or structure that was needed to help teachers to engage in that way.  So I began early connecting research and inquiry learning together and thinking about how these two pieces could be implemented at all ages.

When I was at Guilford College (1988 -89) my professor took our class on an observation visit to Duke School for Children.  It was the university school that has since closed down. But that experience was one that shaped me.  It seemed to be the very vision of what we were talking about in classes. Holistic environment where students were learning, collaborating on things very interesting to them, in fun and playful ways.  It was theme based, but beyond that there was high engagement.  The students used a store to practice math concepts, there were projects everywhere and lots of things happening.  The school was a buzz with learning like no other school I had seen before.  

Unfortunately, that school was not the norm, as I came to find out.  So the resistance is quite literally everywhere. That was why we felt it so important to write the books.  We wanted people to have a clear vision for a different way of learning in schools.  We wanted them to see why this is important to all students right now.  That was what we wrote in the first book, Guided Inquiry Learning in the 21st Century.  We wanted not only librarians but all educators to know about the ISP and the power of a practice that is aligned with what research says about how students learn, not how we teach.  So this is a student driven learning process.  But the exciting thing for me was to pair it with the term Guided.  Through my first years of teaching I realized that I didn’t know exactly how to teach students to read.  So I began my quest into understanding that, which led me to New Zealand where the literacy rate was 99% and digging deeper into Guided Reading and Reading Recovery.  Marie Clay was a researcher that like my mother, looked at how students engaged in a process (reading) and used that evidence to develop a program that matched how students learn to read.  First understand the students, then determine how we teach them!

So from my learning about reading instruction, I decided that my mom’s process was really important work to share, that it could help people to GUIDE students through research and much of the learning in schools could take on this form.  But things would have to shift for that to happen.  

So many things needed shifting- Here are just a few...

• Recognizing that research based practice is more important than a text book program.
• Seeing libraries as a central part of the learning in schools was one big shift.  And that is a shift in teachers, administrators as well as the librarians themselves. 
• Shifting to flexible schedules where the total school program incorporated libraries and research in more central ways.  

These shifts are challenges, but with the new technology it is so much more possible now. Librarians can cull resources on the web for specific inquiries and curate their own resources for teachers using bookmarking and other tools.  There is just a tremendous potential for this approach now, more than ever before, and so I see the obstacles becoming smaller and smaller.

But the mental shift it requires is not small.  And, it is probably our biggest hurdle.  

Do people believe that school can and should be more?  What is our vision for schools and our students?  What our our essential questions that drive the learning in schools?  Why are we doing what we are doing, and how can it be better?

Those are the things we need to ask ourselves today to recognize where we are in history, in the time of information, and shift our approaches to meet the needs of the next generation.  

I am ever hopeful that Guided Inquiry and GIDesign are tools, the structure and way to design learning experiences that are aligned to how students learn through the ISP and support a collaborative culture in schools that libraries have been seeking for years. I hope  that people see through GID these are possible, reachable and that they provide a road map for giving students a deeper learning experience in school.  For they all deserve it.

After sending it and she was pleased with my response, I realize how wonderful it is that we can reach out to others and connect today to learn, and grow from one another.  I had a chance to reflect on my roots with this practice and she got some information and inspiration for implementing Guided Inquiry in her school.  Isn't that lovely?