Often in social media and staff room debates about teaching, it feels like we are talking around in circles. It’s not all about explicit teaching! You can’t teach it all through inquiry! But students should be able to discover for themselves! And on and on it may go. What makes these conversations potentially more confusing and repetitive is that we do not have a shared understanding of the terminology used.
Nathaniel - quick thought on another possible WHEN for inquiry. There are at times when at the start of a unit that a teacher might to pose a brief inquiry- based question. Not for use in an extended higher-order thinking work session, but as a quick and simple door to wonder. A way to trigger, “Hmmm, I never thought about that!” This could be followed by a Quick Write, Turn & Talk, etc., or not. Then on to explicit instruction.
Yeah I get that opportunity. I would say this is less fully fledged inquiry based learning and instead more of a planting of a seed that will grow and student understanding grows in the unit and can be picked up when they are applying new learning
Nathaniel - quick thought on another possible WHEN for inquiry. There are at times when at the start of a unit that a teacher might to pose a brief inquiry- based question. Not for use in an extended higher-order thinking work session, but as a quick and simple door to wonder. A way to trigger, “Hmmm, I never thought about that!” This could be followed by a Quick Write, Turn & Talk, etc., or not. Then on to explicit instruction.
Does that make sense to you?
Yeah I get that opportunity. I would say this is less fully fledged inquiry based learning and instead more of a planting of a seed that will grow and student understanding grows in the unit and can be picked up when they are applying new learning