Promoting Deep Understanding in Readers & Writers

[Megan Garijo Pruitt]

The book I chose to read is called:

 

Engaging Readers & Writers With Inquiry         

Promoting Deep Understandings in Language Arts and the Content Areas With Guiding Questions

 by Jeffrey Wilhelm

Wilhelm is the author of over 15 books for teachers including Improving Comprehension with Think Aloud Strategies.  His career ranges from teaching middle school students to college students.  Currently, he is a professor of English at Boise State University and the Founding Director for the Boise State Writing Project!

 

What does inquiry-based teaching and learning look like in your classroom?

 

          The research in this book finds that inquiry-based instruction can improve academic performance and deeper understanding by students.  It describes how and why we should teach students how to inquire. 

          Big questions, essential questions, or guiding questions are an important concept of inquiry-based instruction.  Wilhelm suggests to teachers to write standards into guiding questions.  This sets the stage for the “inquiry” model of teaching.  Writing 'big questions' helps students generate a real purpose for learning, as well as unfolds the teaching/learning through concepts, vocabulary, strategies, and ideas. 

          Inquiry has different models of implementation.  Some of these names include:  inquiry and design, understanding by design, expeditionary learning, cognitively guided math instruction, etc.  Although the names are different, they share a similar characteristic of; designing instruction that requires students to engage in work that promotes thinking, discussion and learning of new concepts through performance tasks or activities.

 

Practices and strategies that promote inquiry-based learning from the book:

•  Teacher poses questions and has students pose questions
• Instruction includes modeling, mentoring, monitoring, and assisting students in using accurate and relevant discipline-based talk
• Teacher designs a final project in which students apply knowledge to demonstrate
• Planning includes a backwards plan that maps out the activities, conversations, and questions

 

In what ways does inquiry-based instruction benefit students?  What would you add or revise to the ideas on this model to ensure high levels of teaching and learning?

 

 

 

 

 

  

[Leigh A. Rasmussen]

Megan,

 

Great article and questions and so appropriate for today's teaching practices. Inquiry-based instruction is a perfect strategy to use with Common Core State Standards. CCSS promotes independent learning which occurs when students use inquiry based instruction. The benefit for students can be how they take ownership of their own learning, learning can be differentiated, and can evolved over time and content. Concerns I have about inquiry based learning is how students are instructed and guided through the process. Also as teachers we must keep the focus on the the standards and make sure grading is based on the learning of those standards and not the presentations of the inquiry. I believe that one way to help assure the standards are the focus is to use backward lesson design, rubrics and teacher peer development of inquiry based projects. When teachers work together we tend to see our target of learning from all angles.

[Lucy Elise Peters]

Megan,

I like to use the inquiry-based insturction model in my foods classes.  When students are given an initial question on the daily topic, other questions naturally follow.  Many students give me ideas through these exchanges to write other lessons from.  I like to pose the question in a different way as an exit ticket for the same day or another day as a review.  When I do that, I set up the situation so the students know they are reviewing, and to refer to their notebooks.  Regardless, I find it to be a great way to teach.  I have a very fluid curicullum anyway, and I want to work in as many topics about food that come from the students as I can.  This year, I will be reserving the laptop cart more to engage students in online research.  I have a web-quest lesson on the "Importance of Family Mealtime", to unveil that I developed in a UNR class.  I know my students will help me revise that through the many questions it is sure to inspire.  --Lucy

[Doug Zimmerman]

Megan -

I like the idea of inquiry-based models to either supplement or enhance research essays.  This type of project also works well with students who have had, or have never cared to have, much experience outside of their electronic life.  A student who has wondered how engines work, or who has an interest in sculpting, or is even the slightest bit curious about how Slinky's are made, can now make these discoveries.  In some sense, they are moving away from researching ideas (the classic essay) and toward researching things. 

The other wonderful thing about inquiry is that it lends itself to multimedia presentations, oral reports, thus allowing a student to become a teacher.  Just as with research projects, the inquiry-based project would require instructors to help narrow topics else they become too big for a student to handle in a single semester.  And, as always, conferences and weekly progress checks are a must.

[Tracey Albee]

Megan,

 

I think more inquiry-based instruction needs to happen in the classroom. There are many benefits to inquiry-based instruction in the classroom. I know that when I did my inquiry-based demonstration I was surprised at everything that I learned on my own. Inquiry-based instruction gives students ownership of their learning, it helps them learn research skills, it helps them become self-reliant, teaches students a process that they can use over and over again. and lets them choose how they want to present what they have learned. I really like this style of instruction. I like modeling and assisting students in owning their learning.  I also enjoy seeing the many different ideas they come up with on showcasing their learning.

 

I really like the strategies that this book promotes. I think as teachers we need to keep in mind the questions we pose to our students. If we want our students to have a higher level of thinking we need to make sure the questions we pose promote higher level thinking. I also like the idea of the teacher designing a final project but I think that we should give several different choices and allow the students to showcase their learning in any fashion they wish. I think guidelines are important for the students but they should have ownership in their learning and giving them choices will help with them having ownership.

 

Great topic! See you soon!

 

Tracey

[Leigh A. Rasmussen]

 Hello Megan,

I absolutely love inquiry-based instruction. The main reason is because most time there is more than one right answer! Students need to think, apply, prove, develop an outcome and use many other skills to create a conclusion. These skills are all important when you apply the Common Core standards to your lessons. The benefit to the student can be the freedom of expression, ownership of learning, confidence, and even love of learning. As a teacher I love watching students struggle with a question and then discover the answer! I cannot think of any thing I would add to to your guideline; however I would caution teachers to ALWAYS keep at the four front the standard/objective or expected outcome! Sometimes we get so excited that the students are engaged that we forget what the goal was. It is our job to always be the facilitator of learning.

[Lucy Elise Peters]

Megan,

 

Eventhough I responded earlier to your post, I had additional thoughts.

 I believe this book was used by one of my Vocational Ed. teachers. We are encouraged to follow the standards very closely like a road map in Career and Tech Ed. My professor worked a lot on Bloom's Taxonomy, and how we should word those questions to engage our students. When I do use this method, and carefully plan my instruction, the week is wonderful. I feel like I accomplish deeper understanding and learning with my students. When I focus only on the recipe we are making, and not on the academic part of the lesson, I feel like my class is just a social hour with some minimal learning thrown in.

Last spring, I ran into a former student at a local grocery chain. While in line, I was unloading the things onto his check out stand. He recognized me, and started spouting out about the things he learned during our Nutrition unit I had done the Fall he took my class. This information was covered early on, and I had worked hard on planning the days. To be honest, at that point in the year, I wasn't polished on assessment, and didn't know if anything had stuck. This student's knowledge and ability to retain the information we covered impressed other people in line and myself. It coinfirmed my belief that planning is where it is at in teaching, and this year, I am in planning overdrive to have more students like him.

[Gia Maraccini]

Hey Megan!

I have read the Understanding by Design book and have used different elements from that reading in my teaching.  I have always had a certain level of inquiry driven instruction in my teaching, but this year I decided to take it to a different place.  We have a 7^th period class in 6^th grade at Depoali.  It is called Academic Success and the students are off team.  This provided a challenge for me, since these students would not be in my core ELA and so therefor not be part of my reader’s or writer’s workshop formats.  The goal of this class is to get students reading and writing more in all ELA sections.  I have decided to run an inquiry based class.  All students have expert journals and they are working on what they want to become an expert on.  They get to pick what they are going to research.  This summer I spent lots of time working this class backwards from the final presentation, to the writing piece that will be created and the research that needs to be done.  I think I am very focused on the end task and have given the students a strong framework to work within.  Students will have weekly conferences (more if needed) with me and I will also be doing an expert research project that I will share strategies through mini-lessons.  I am very excited about what is ahead for this class, and after our first week, feeling energy from students for research that I haven’t experienced in my past.  The learning curve will be huge as we travel through this semester, and I know that I will have to modify and adjust as we work through our research.  I can’t guarantee that there will be high levels of teaching and learning, but I am excited to try and push the students and myself on a daily basis.

Gia