Boom! The Power of Questions. What an amazing #plearnchat we had on Monday, February 22nd, 2016! Exciting conversations that went by so fast and started with the Big Question: "How can we empower learners to take control over their own learning? " We used the Q1, A1 format with these questions: Who controls the questions in your classroom and why? How can we shift control to learners to make learning experiences more meaningful? Why should learners be involved in developing their own inquiry? Every learner deserves the opportunity to be in control of their learning and to develop as learners. Starr Sackstein, @MsSackstein, is a high school English and Journalism teacher at World Journalism Preparatory School in Flushing, NY where her learners run a multi-media news outlet at WJPSnews.com. We had educators jumping in with their thoughts and ideas around the importance of questioning, how to teach learners to question and how the questioning classroom should look and sound.
A few resources from the chat: Making Learning Meaningful and Lasting. Even after eight years of teaching history, I struggle with helping my students retain and make effective use of their learning. Several years ago, a returning senior asked if she could retake the final exam in my United States history course in September. She had earned a solid "A" just three months earlier, but after a long and eventful summer, she wanted to know how much she remembered.
As it turned out, not much. My once-shining star had devolved into just an average student, earning a "C" on the same exam. She couldn’t recall historical intricacies that once rolled off her tongue, nor could she effectively articulate the main arguments for American territorial expansion from 1820 to 1860, and the impact this had in leading up to the Civil War. To better understand why this happens, I recently spoke to Mark A. Connect Content With Meaning My student found no reason to remember facts which meant little to her personally. Discourage Rote Memorization Encourage Self-Testing. Part Three: Inquiry in the Classroom | techdiva29. Calvin and Hobbes is one of my favourite comic strips and the one above demonstrates how the education system focuses too much on facts and less on the development of skills. Inquiry not only helps students to acquire skills such as critical thinking, analyzing, and evaluating but it also helps with growth mindset.
By asking essential questions, which are open ended such as the ones I have done in my class, students begin to realize that there isn’t one answer to a question and that the answer isn’t clear. This is where inquiry starts with students asking even more questions. Now, I want to take a minute to point out the difference between wondering and inquiring. Wondering leads to one right answer. For example, we might wonder why dogs can’t eat chocolate but there is one correct answer to this question (it’s because of the compound theobromine found in cocoa), so it can’t be considered real inquiry. I think one of the best things about this unit was our literature circles. Mc craftingdrivingquestions. Inquiry-Based Learning. Inquiry-Based Learning. Inquiry-Based Learning: From Teacher-Guided to Student-Driven.
Student: I opened it up, and there was a root inside. Anne: What's exciting about the inquiry models that we go far and above what the curriculum expectations are. Kids are invested in their learning, and they're able to transfer and apply what they're learning in school to the real world. Lindsay: Inquiry based learning allows the students to be the thinkers. Teachers begin their lesson with an idea of where they want to end in mind, but really give the students the opportunity to drive it to that point. Lindsay: So your job, keep working through your procedure, when you all agree, I'll come back and check in with you. Dawn: We have guided inquiry, where teachers are guiding students through the curriculum. D.J.: Okay, find that five milliliters. Dawn: And then making a shift into student driven inquiry, where students use that as prior knowledge and build their own inquiries around that. Lindsay: And once someone finds something, make sure that you tell the rest of the paleontologists.
Developinginquiryquestions. Teaching Students to Self-Assess: How do I help students reflect and grow as learners? (ASCD Arias): Starr Sackstein: 9781416621539: Amazon.com: Books. Teaching Students to Self-Assess: How do I help students reflect and grow as learners? (ASCD Arias): Starr Sackstein: 9781416621539: Amazon.com: Books.