First of all - what is inquiry? Inquiry skills, or critical thinking skills, are student’s ability to think about, process, and question information. Students with low inquiry skills may look at new information and immediately respond, “I don’t get it” without even trying, while students with higher inquiry skills will look at new information and immediately begin asking questions. With AI and tech making it easier to think less, we must teach students to not only think about the information that is put in front of them, but to question it.
So how do we teach students about inquiry?
Luckily, teaching students about inquiry can be fun! It involves intentionally giving students ample time to practice thinking about information, writing questions, and asking questions. It also means teachers need to practice modeling these skills themselves. Let’s look at some ways you can integrate inquiry into your classroom.
Wonder Walls
Create a space in your classroom with a rotating image, number, problem, or ‘Word of the Day/Week’ that students can create questions about - anything to get them thinking and writing. Call it something fun, like Puzzling Prompts, Question Corner, or Question Queen/King to encourage students to jostle for the ‘best’ question of the class period, day or week.
Put this space somewhere visible and easy to access, like near your door so that students can drop questions into a collection space on their way in/out of class, or in the back of the room so that they can participate in a more discreet way.
Make reading the questions an activity! This can be done during warm up time, or at the end of class. Review them on your own first, then consider passing them out to students to read them out loud, classify the questions as a level 1, level 2, or level 3 (cue class conversation) and choose your top 3 for the week. Everybody wins because everybody is LEARNING.
Breaking Bad Habits
As teachers we love when students learn - yay! But sometimes we steal their learning moment by giving them the answer - boo. It’s a habit we’ve all had, but it’s time to break it. It took me years to train myself out of giving answers to my math students, but my classroom transitioned to a better learning environment when I began asking students questions instead of simply giving them a simple answer in response.
“What do you know about the problem?”
“Where did you get stuck?”
“What don’t you understand? What do you understand so far?”
“Can you explain to me what you have done so far?”
“Why don’t we go back to the beginning and you talk me through this?”
Usually one of these would help the student realize what mistake they made, or that they did know something about the problem and be able to be more specific about what they were confused about. Just because we are teachers does not mean that we know everything about teaching, even if we’ve been at this for years. If you aren’t yet responding to your students with questions - try it out. Modeling inquiry in your classroom is the easiest way to reinforce what you’re teaching and it will help remind you and your students to keep practicing those skills throughout the year.
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