Curious Homework: An Inquiry Project for Students and Parents Photo credit: iStockphoto International educator Scot Hoffman is a big believer in the power of curiosity to drive learning. After nearly two decades of teaching around the globe, he also realizes that school isn't always so hospitable to inquiring minds. (As Einstein said, "It's a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.") That's why Hoffman has developed The Curiosity Project, a self-directed learning experience that engages students, parents, and teachers as collaborators in inquiry. I first met Hoffman a couple years ago during a visit to the American School of Bombay in Mumbai, India. Here are highlights of our recent conversations about The Curiosity Project. What was the inspiration for this idea? Scot Hoffman: In about my third year of teaching -- this was back in the 1990s -- there were a couple students I just wasn't reaching. Another inspiration was a set of questions that a former professor, Dr. What is curiosity? What did you notice? How has the project evolved?
Improving Learning in Small Classes - Teaching Excellence Because a class is smaller and discussion is more likely, some professors feel that simply introducing a topic related to reading is adequate to motivate students and promote learning. Small classes need structure just as lecture classes do. Further, many students lack instructional awareness and are unfamiliar with classes that require active learning. Without structure or sufficient experience on the part of students, small classes, simply because of their size, will not be effective ways for students to learn. Much of the advice for good teaching in large classes holds true for small classes as well. Think through your ENTIRE course. Setting up small classes to work well requires significant time initially, and a great deal of attention particularly early in the semester with lower-level classes. Adapted from Philip C.
Learning Science Through Inquiry Frequently Asked Questions About Inquiry Workshop 1 | Workshop 2 | Workshop 3 | Workshop 4 | Workshop 5 Workshop 6 | Workshop 7 | Workshop 8 Contributing Authors: Christine Collier - principal of the Center for Inquiry, a K-8 magnet/option school in the Indianapolis Public School district Judith Johnson - associate professor of science education at the University of Central Florida; associate director of the Lockheed Martin/University of Central Florida Academy of Mathematics and Science Lisa Nyberg - assistant professor in the education department at California State University, Fresno Virginia Lockwood - staff developer and consultant, District 2 New York City 1. Inquiry teaching is allowing students’ questions and curiosities to drive curriculum. 2. In an inquiry-based classroom, students aren't waiting for the teacher or someone else to provide an answer — instead, they are actively seeking solutions, designing investigations, and asking new questions. 3. top 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
5 Tools to Help Students Learn How to Learn Helping students learn how to learn: That’s what most educators strive for, and that’s the goal of inquiry learning. That skill transfers to other academic subject areas and even to the workplace where employers have consistently said that they want creative, innovative and adaptive thinkers. Inquiry learning is an integrated approach that includes kinds of learning: content, literacy, information literacy, learning how to learn, and social or collaborative skills. Students think about the choices they make throughout the process and the way they feel as they learn. Those observations are as important as the content they learn or the projects they create. “We want students thinking about their thinking,” said Leslie Maniotes a teacher effectiveness coach in the Denver Public Schools and one of the authors of Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st Century. “When they are able to see where they came from and where they got to it is very powerful for them.”
Stalking the Superior Syllabus - Teaching Excellence "Stalking the Superior Syllabus" was a Reflective Practice Group Presentation by John Woolcock held on August 15 and September 4, 1997. The Functions of a Syllabus Establishes an Early Point of Contact Between Student and InstructorHelps Set the Tone for the CourseDescribes Your Beliefs About Higher Education Places the Course in the Broad Context of the DisciplineAcquaints Students with Course LogisticsDefines Student ResponsibilitiesDescribes the Role of Special Teaching and Learning Practices (Active Learning, Technology, etc.)Helps Students Assess Their Readiness for the CourseDescribes Available Learning ResourcesIt Models Good Planning and OrganizationRepresents a Learning Contract Between You and the Student A Basic Syllabus Checklist Course Information (Title, Number, Prerequisites, etc.) from Catalog Instructor/Contact Information (Office, Telephone, E-mail, etc.) What is a Learning-Centered Syllabus? Why Have a Learning-Centered Syllabus? Components of a Learning-Centered Syllabus
Steps to Inquiry voicEd.ca has invited Canadian bloggers writing about education to post their “best” entry of 2012. This may a piece of writing to which they feel particularly attached, something that received some good response, or an entry that got others thinking in a different way. We’ll be featuring these pieces in this space over the next couple of weeks with the hopes that readers might find them to be a good review of where our thinking has taken us over the past year. Feel free to join in the conversation, or submit your own entry for posting! The following blog entry is from Louise Robitaille who blogs at Inquiry-based Learning. Step 1: Teachers gather and collect as much information as possible on the subject, to help students with research, investigations and inquiries. Step 2: Teachers help to develop background knowledge for students. Step 3: Teachers share mentor texts and model lessons. Step 4: Teachers give students a choice of what they would like to learn more about.
Why Inquiry Learning is Worth the Trouble Visualization of SLA principal Chris Lehmann's 2011 talk: guiding kids' to thinking about how they think. Nearly seven years after first opening its doors, the Science Leadership Academy public magnet high school* in Philadelphia and its inquiry-based approach to learning have become a national model for the kinds of reforms educators strive towards. But in a talk this past weekend at EduCon 2.5, the school’s sixth-annual conference devoted to sharing its story and spreading its techniques, Founding Principal Chris Lehmann insisted that replicating his schools approach required difficult tradeoffs. “This is not easy. This is not perfect,” Lehmann told a crowd of devotees stuffed inside one of the Center City school’s second-floor science classrooms on Sunday. “There are really challenging pieces of this, and we should be OK with this.” “Inquiry means living in the soup. “To me it comes down to process,” Lehmann said. “Oh God, yeah,” Lehmann said in response to the latter teacher. Related
What is IBL? - The Academy of Inquiry Based Learning Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) is a student-centered method of teaching Mathematics. At the college mathematics level one of the forms of IBL is the Modified Moore Method, named after R. L. Moore. Other forms of IBL are also recognized, which employ different course structures, including some group work, projects, and courses that are not theorem-proof based (e.g. statistics, courses for preservice teachers). Boiled down to its essence IBL is a teaching method that engages students in sense-making activities. E. Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is a method of instruction that places the student, the subject, and their interaction at the center of the learning experience. A typical day in an IBL math course is hard to define, due to the variance across the environments and needs at institutions across the nation and world.
Is School Enough? Documentary Film Delves In A documentary film premiering on public television today — “Is School Enough?” — takes the viewer inside the lives of teens from various backgrounds and reveals the importance of tapping into students’ passions to drive their learning. These are some of the covered topics. Students at English High School in Boston helped pilot a social networking and planning tool called Community Planit. “I’m always trying to keep my ear to the ground to get my kids involved with meaningful projects,” said Xavier Rozas, instruction technology coordinator at English High School. “If it’s real and it’s meaningful and the kids understand it and they understand what putting their effort into something is going to deliver, they will go hard and do their best.” “At first when he brought it up I didn’t know what to do because we’re teens and he basically wanted us to act like adults, to speak up like adults,” said Xavier, an English High School student who participated in the project. Related
AEC394/WC075: What Is Inquiry-Based Instruction? Anna J. Warner and Brian E. Myers2 Introduction Educators should constantly evaluate and adjust their teaching approaches to meet the educational needs of their students and society. What is Inquiry-Based Teaching? Inquiry-based teaching is a teaching method that combines the curiosity of students and the scientific method to enhance the development of critical thinking skills while learning science. Students engage in five activities when they engage in inquiry learning and use the scientific method, as noted in the National Science Education Standards published by the National Academy of Sciences. Figure 1. Tasks of Inquiry Credit: Carin, Bass, & Contant, 2005, p. 21 [Click thumbnail to enlarge.] According to the National Academy of Sciences (1995), when students learn through inquiry, they: question;investigate;use evidence to describe, explain, and predict;connect evidence to knowledge; and share findings. Each of these factors can be found in the following example. Example 1 Example U.S.
The Challenges and Realities of Inquiry-Based Learning Inquiry Learning Teaching Strategies Getty By Thom Markham Teachers in a rural southeast Michigan high school were recently discussing the odd behavior of the senior class. The teachers’ explanation: Project-based learning. Here’s the back story. Stories like this are about to become more important to educators. This is a steep challenge because it forces education to cross a philosophic divide. Standardizing Valuable Skills To put a new system in place, a first key step is to disseminate and train every teacher on a clear set of performance standards to assess skills required for effective inquiry, such as communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. The challenge: Right now, a standards-based environment forces teachers to straddle the inquiry process. Assessing Collaborative Learning The iconic model of the individual scholar has been replaced by team-based inquiry. Making Depth of Thinking Evident The challenge: In inquiry, process is as critical as the product.
Inquiry-based Learning: Explanation What is inquiry-based learning? An old adage states: "Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand." The last part of this statement is the essence of inquiry-based learning, says our workshop author Joe Exline 1. Inquiry implies involvement that leads to understanding. Furthermore, involvement in learning implies possessing skills and attitudes that permit you to seek resolutions to questions and issues while you construct new knowledge. "Inquiry" is defined as "a seeking for truth, information, or knowledge -- seeking information by questioning." A Context for Inquiry Unfortunately, our traditional educational system has worked in a way that discourages the natural process of inquiry. Some of the discouragement of our natural inquiry process may come from a lack of understanding about the deeper nature of inquiry-based learning. Importance of Inquiry Memorizing facts and information is not the most important skill in today's world. The Application of Inquiry