Welcome! Introduction to Inquiry in the Classroom
Lara:
Hello Everyone!
So I wanted to focus on learning more about inquiry-based learning just in general.
Focus: Inquiry based instruction throughout the classroom Key: Red- Extra resources to use Blue- Articles and documents Green- Refelection, Summary, and Action
Article and Discussion:
I found an article from Amsterdam about Inquiry Mathematics and how to use key concepts within the instruction. http://www.pz.harvard.edu/vt/VisibleThinking_html_files/01_VisibleThinkingInAction/01c_VTPoP.html Reflection and Summary
- Throughout our discussion, we (Krista and I) learned how to use the key concepts in the math curriculum. My biggest issue was how do I use inquiry in to everything that I am doing in the classroom and this research showed me how I can adapt to concepts even in math. Krista and I decided that we can take a simple concept such as patterns and use our key concepts to further the students thinking and problem solving skills. Action In January I am going to try and use more of the key concepts in my teaching and try to focus on why we learn the way we do, rather then just presenting the information. As I have learned from Krista, it is important for the students to learn the reasoning behind their learning so they can be problem solvers in the furture with piror knowledge. I think I am just starting to really understand how inquiry works!
Article and Discussion:
I was wanted to research more on the concept of Action and how I can integrate that more into my classroom. I stumbled upon a website that quoted, ... demonstrations of deeper learning in responsible behaviour through positive action and service; a manifestation in the practice of the other essential elements... And after reflecting on this quote, I realized that Action is the hierarchy of the learning cycle. Action is the reflection and the evidence that learning has occurred and they students truly understand the meaning behind the concept. I want to reach even further, and learn about the types of action. Just in the classroom, I have tried to categorize the student’s action into three different categories.
1. Knowledgeable Action
2. Problem Solving Action
3. Societal Action.
As I learn more about PYP, I learn that all the elements are interwined and thrive off eachother. I will be able to start evaluating my instruction by assessing if the students are taking action off the concepts they are learning in class.
Notes: Future Action!
For our furture units (HTWW- Challenges) I can explore these resources for literature that can help me explain action to the students and look for examples to provide quality classroom instruction. Inspiring Activism through Literature -- booklist created by Sue Klinkhamer and Louise Phinney (UWCSEA East)
Article and Discussion: Taking Action- Article from Comprehension and Collaboration After teaching a unit on slavery, teachers co-constructed a anchor chart with the class to adress the larger question for all to consider: What do we do about modern slavery? From this question, students were able to come up with three differnt types of action to make an impact. 1. Activism: doing something specific 2. Awareness: Educating others 3. Aid: Contributing your own resources. This article gave me real-life situations that lead to students taking action and was a clear example of how students used action in their classroom. I like how the students categorized their action, and will use this example as a reference in recongizing action in the classroom.
Article and Discussion: The Keys to Inquiry Section 1:Inquiry Learning and Learning from One Owns Experience.
In this article, scientist were talking about how we need to learn from one's experience, which is based on the constructivism philosophy.
I have really taken an interest in learning more about this philosophy since Jamie Quirk is currently helping us learn and grow from our past experiences and lessons.
From the Article:My notes are highlighted... I will comment on them at the end of the article. http://hea-www.harvard.edu/ECT/Inquiry/inquiry1.html Knowledge as Constructed
Learning from one's experience and through one's questions is based on a philosophy called "constructivism," put forth by Piaget and others. According to constructivism, we don't just absorb understanding, instead we build it. Learners need opportunities to figure out for themselves how new learning fits with old so that they can attach it to what they already know, making it part of their existing knowledge structures or "assimilating it." When they figure out that new learning doesn't with old learning, they need to restructure their current understandings to fit with the new knowledge or to "accommodate it." These processes, assimilating and accommodating, are part of learners' theory building as they make sense of the world.
What does this mean for the classroom?In part, it means that children cannot just sit like sponges and absorb information. They must do something with it. They need to be engaged in activities that help them build understanding. Beyond this, it means that often the child is the best judge of what questions he or she needs to explore to make sense of the information before him or her. For instance, if a class is engaged in an activity on weights and measurement and a child is trying to figure out if you could use pebbles as weights to measure with, introducing a particular standard for measuring weight eclipses that child's opportunity to construct an understanding of whether we need standards of measure and what purpose they serve.
Research shows that unless children actively seek connections in their learning, they are not likely to remember what they've supposedly learned. Not only this, they often cannot apply concepts. The learning is inert or has a ritualized nature. It is also unlikely that children will discover areas of misunderstanding if they don't actively grapple with the ideas. Educational Researcher, David Perkins writes about the problems of each of these types of "fragile knowledge." Fragile knowledge hurts learners and does not empower them to understand or deal with their world.
While most teachers find the central concepts of constructivism appealing, the concepts also tend to raise a lot of questions. The translation from theory to practice contains many possible stumbling blocks. The largest stumbling block has to do with helping students to build understandings that will serve them well in today's world. Constructivism and inquiry-based learning can lead to many dead-ends in that children find out what doesn't work instead of what does; or they find out that they asked the wrong question; or that what they did won't help them to answer the question that they want to answer. These are valuable understandings. They help students learn a lot about the process of science and what one must think about when trying to answer certain kinds of questions. However, they don't necessarily help children construct present-day understandings of how the world works.
After all, while individual scientists might spend an entire life time developing an understanding of an isolated phenomenon, we have an accumulated wealth of scientific information that no learner could entirely reconstruct in the course of one lifetime. It has been argued that this is children's rightful inheritance.
The "Discovery-Learning" Movement and "Mediated Constructivism"
These issues are similar to questions raised in response to the Discovery-Learning movement of the 1960's. Students were encouraged to engage in hands-on tasks to discover science principles. Too often, students didn't have a clue as to what they were doing and why. Activities were hands-on but they weren't necessarily minds-on. Too often, the questions weren't posed by students and they may not have understood why the questions being asked were relevant. Students were learning important messages about discovery and the process of science, but without adequate scaffolding of student understandings, it was difficult to know exactly what science principles students were discovering.
How to strike a balance between children's constructing of understanding and their "rightful inheritance" to an accumulated wealth of scientific understanding presented a puzzle that can be addressed through the work of Russian philosopher and psychologist, Lev Vygotsky. According to Vygotsky, children learned within a "zone of proximal development" which is defined by the difference between the level of understanding that children can achieve on their own and that which they can achieve with adult guidance. The role of the adult is to scaffold children's building of understanding by asking guiding questions and providing opportunities for certain experiences.
From the joint work of Vygotsky and Piaget, arises a concept that can be called mediated constructivism. Children construct understanding by learning through their experiences and their own questions but the process is mediated by adults who hold scientific understandings of how the world works. It allows for building understanding as part of a society or community of learners. Children engage in Socratic discussion of ideas, guided by the teacher, to help them build new understandings. Mediated constructivism involves a thoughtful choreography between student and teacher. The teacher must constantly study the student's evolving understanding, assess what path it is on, and help the child to have and to take advantage of opportunities that enable the child to construct new and more sophisticated understandings. The teacher must guide while taking care not to be directive such that it undermines the child's incentive to explore the question. It doesn't mean that teacher can't arrange certain experiences for children. It does mean that the teacher needs to pay attention to how students are making sense of the experiences and whether the experience helps them to answer a question that they care about.
Reflection and Understanding:
The quote, "We don't absorb information, we build on it" explains what I have been trying to accomplish in my classroom. By using the LOI, students should be able to build on their previous knowledge to further their understanding on the concept. Over the past couple months, I have really seen a flow from how the students are benefitting and building on top of their previously learned knowledge.
After reading this article, I have realized that the IB program is directly related to constructivist and inquiry learning (I knew that, but I don't think I truly understood it). At the beginning of the year, I was basically just following my mentor teacher- hoping to grasp any kind of information that would lead to become a better inquiry teacher. Now, I am really thinking about the students learning and taking that to the next level. My mentor and I are starting to collaborate rather then just me following in her footsteps. I am now making the connections between the students learning and how they are learning. I may have hands-on learning but the students are not actively exploring and discovering the concepts. I now know that the hands-on inquiries have to be student lead and teacher guided. I also have learned that the students need to foster a understanding of the concept by exploring their interests. Students are going to instruct their knowledge based on their experiences and their understandings, therefore planners are always going to be changing and I am also going to have to adapt my instruction to the students current needs.
This article really helped me understand the theories that I have been trying to implement into my classroom.
Introduction to Inquiry in the Classroom
Lara:
Hello Everyone!
So I wanted to focus on learning more about inquiry-based learning just in general.
Focus: Inquiry based instruction throughout the classroom
Key:
Red- Extra resources to use
Blue- Articles and documents
Green- Refelection, Summary, and Action
1.http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/inquiry/index_sub2.html
2.http://www.ibo.org/pyp/
3. Really awesome website full of PYP and inquiry resources!!!!
http://sites.google.com/site/pypresources/home/inquiry
4. Refering to Action books (In Kindergarten, we could use these examples to show and explain how and why people take action.
Inspiring Activism through Literature -- booklist created by Sue Klinkhamer and Louise Phinney (UWCSEA East)
I found an article from Amsterdam about Inquiry Mathematics and how to use key concepts within the instruction.
http://www.pz.harvard.edu/vt/VisibleThinking_html_files/01_VisibleThinkingInAction/01c_VTPoP.html
Reflection and Summary
- Throughout our discussion, we (Krista and I) learned how to use the key concepts in the math curriculum. My biggest issue was how do I use inquiry in to everything that I am doing in the classroom and this research showed me how I can adapt to concepts even in math. Krista and I decided that we can take a simple concept such as patterns and use our key concepts to further the students thinking and problem solving skills.
Action
In January I am going to try and use more of the key concepts in my teaching and try to focus on why we learn the way we do, rather then just presenting the information. As I have learned from Krista, it is important for the students to learn the reasoning behind their learning so they can be problem solvers in the furture with piror knowledge. I think I am just starting to really understand how inquiry works!
Article and Discussion:
I was wanted to research more on the concept of Action and how I can integrate that more into my classroom. I stumbled upon a website that quoted,
... demonstrations of deeper learning in responsible behaviour through positive action and service; a manifestation in the practice of the other essential elements...
And after reflecting on this quote, I realized that Action is the hierarchy of the learning cycle. Action is the reflection and the evidence that learning has occurred and they students truly understand the meaning behind the concept. I want to reach even further, and learn about the types of action. Just in the classroom, I have tried to categorize the student’s action into three different categories.
1. Knowledgeable Action
2. Problem Solving Action
3. Societal Action.
As I learn more about PYP, I learn that all the elements are interwined and thrive off eachother. I will be able to start evaluating my instruction by assessing if the students are taking action off the concepts they are learning in class.
Notes: Future Action!
For our furture units (HTWW- Challenges) I can explore these resources for literature that can help me explain action to the students and look for examples to provide quality classroom instruction.
Inspiring Activism through Literature -- booklist created by Sue Klinkhamer and Louise Phinney (UWCSEA East)
Article and Discussion:
Taking Action- Article from Comprehension and Collaboration
After teaching a unit on slavery, teachers co-constructed a anchor chart with the class to adress the larger question for all to consider: What do we do about modern slavery? From this question, students were able to come up with three differnt types of action to make an impact.
1. Activism: doing something specific
2. Awareness: Educating others
3. Aid: Contributing your own resources.
This article gave me real-life situations that lead to students taking action and was a clear example of how students used action in their classroom. I like how the students categorized their action, and will use this example as a reference in recongizing action in the classroom.
Article and Discussion: The Keys to Inquiry
Section 1:Inquiry Learning and Learning from One Owns Experience.
In this article, scientist were talking about how we need to learn from one's experience, which is based on the constructivism philosophy.
I have really taken an interest in learning more about this philosophy since Jamie Quirk is currently helping us learn and grow from our past experiences and lessons.
From the Article:My notes are highlighted... I will comment on them at the end of the article.
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/ECT/Inquiry/inquiry1.html
Knowledge as Constructed
Learning from one's experience and through one's questions is based on a philosophy called "constructivism," put forth by Piaget and others. According to constructivism, we don't just absorb understanding, instead we build it. Learners need opportunities to figure out for themselves how new learning fits with old so that they can attach it to what they already know, making it part of their existing knowledge structures or "assimilating it." When they figure out that new learning doesn't with old learning, they need to restructure their current understandings to fit with the new knowledge or to "accommodate it." These processes, assimilating and accommodating, are part of learners' theory building as they make sense of the world.
What does this mean for the classroom? In part, it means that children cannot just sit like sponges and absorb information. They must do something with it. They need to be engaged in activities that help them build understanding. Beyond this, it means that often the child is the best judge of what questions he or she needs to explore to make sense of the information before him or her. For instance, if a class is engaged in an activity on weights and measurement and a child is trying to figure out if you could use pebbles as weights to measure with, introducing a particular standard for measuring weight eclipses that child's opportunity to construct an understanding of whether we need standards of measure and what purpose they serve.
Research shows that unless children actively seek connections in their learning, they are not likely to remember what they've supposedly learned. Not only this, they often cannot apply concepts. The learning is inert or has a ritualized nature. It is also unlikely that children will discover areas of misunderstanding if they don't actively grapple with the ideas. Educational Researcher, David Perkins writes about the problems of each of these types of "fragile knowledge." Fragile knowledge hurts learners and does not empower them to understand or deal with their world.
While most teachers find the central concepts of constructivism appealing, the concepts also tend to raise a lot of questions. The translation from theory to practice contains many possible stumbling blocks. The largest stumbling block has to do with helping students to build understandings that will serve them well in today's world. Constructivism and inquiry-based learning can lead to many dead-ends in that children find out what doesn't work instead of what does; or they find out that they asked the wrong question; or that what they did won't help them to answer the question that they want to answer. These are valuable understandings. They help students learn a lot about the process of science and what one must think about when trying to answer certain kinds of questions. However, they don't necessarily help children construct present-day understandings of how the world works.
After all, while individual scientists might spend an entire life time developing an understanding of an isolated phenomenon, we have an accumulated wealth of scientific information that no learner could entirely reconstruct in the course of one lifetime. It has been argued that this is children's rightful inheritance.
The "Discovery-Learning" Movement and "Mediated Constructivism"
These issues are similar to questions raised in response to the Discovery-Learning movement of the 1960's. Students were encouraged to engage in hands-on tasks to discover science principles. Too often, students didn't have a clue as to what they were doing and why. Activities were hands-on but they weren't necessarily minds-on. Too often, the questions weren't posed by students and they may not have understood why the questions being asked were relevant. Students were learning important messages about discovery and the process of science, but without adequate scaffolding of student understandings, it was difficult to know exactly what science principles students were discovering.How to strike a balance between children's constructing of understanding and their "rightful inheritance" to an accumulated wealth of scientific understanding presented a puzzle that can be addressed through the work of Russian philosopher and psychologist, Lev Vygotsky. According to Vygotsky, children learned within a "zone of proximal development" which is defined by the difference between the level of understanding that children can achieve on their own and that which they can achieve with adult guidance. The role of the adult is to scaffold children's building of understanding by asking guiding questions and providing opportunities for certain experiences.
From the joint work of Vygotsky and Piaget, arises a concept that can be called mediated constructivism. Children construct understanding by learning through their experiences and their own questions but the process is mediated by adults who hold scientific understandings of how the world works. It allows for building understanding as part of a society or community of learners. Children engage in Socratic discussion of ideas, guided by the teacher, to help them build new understandings.
Mediated constructivism involves a thoughtful choreography between student and teacher. The teacher must constantly study the student's evolving understanding, assess what path it is on, and help the child to have and to take advantage of opportunities that enable the child to construct new and more sophisticated understandings. The teacher must guide while taking care not to be directive such that it undermines the child's incentive to explore the question. It doesn't mean that teacher can't arrange certain experiences for children. It does mean that the teacher needs to pay attention to how students are making sense of the experiences and whether the experience helps them to answer a question that they care about.
Reflection and Understanding:
The quote, "We don't absorb information, we build on it" explains what I have been trying to accomplish in my classroom. By using the LOI, students should be able to build on their previous knowledge to further their understanding on the concept. Over the past couple months, I have really seen a flow from how the students are benefitting and building on top of their previously learned knowledge.
After reading this article, I have realized that the IB program is directly related to constructivist and inquiry learning (I knew that, but I don't think I truly understood it). At the beginning of the year, I was basically just following my mentor teacher- hoping to grasp any kind of information that would lead to become a better inquiry teacher. Now, I am really thinking about the students learning and taking that to the next level. My mentor and I are starting to collaborate rather then just me following in her footsteps. I am now making the connections between the students learning and how they are learning. I may have hands-on learning but the students are not actively exploring and discovering the concepts. I now know that the hands-on inquiries have to be student lead and teacher guided. I also have learned that the students need to foster a understanding of the concept by exploring their interests. Students are going to instruct their knowledge based on their experiences and their understandings, therefore planners are always going to be changing and I am also going to have to adapt my instruction to the students current needs.
This article really helped me understand the theories that I have been trying to implement into my classroom.
Updated: 3-13-12