I want to create a student centered environment where my students take ownership of their learning. Inquiry gives student agency and mirrors the type of learning they'll engage in during their college, career, and civic lives. By using inquiry, students develop skills geared towards self-sufficiency, allowing them to become life long learners. The type of inquiry students engage is structure or guided inquiry as I help build the scaffolds and structures that students work through. The knowledge they gain, however, is their own.
What Do I Mean By Inquiry?
Inquiry means to gain knowledge through investigation.
It is structured with four essential elements 1) Phenomenon 2) Questions 3) Investigation 4) Tasks
What Does Inquiry Look Like In My Chemistry Classroom?
PHENOMENON--I always start with aphenomenonfor my students to observe. This phenomenon can be an activity, a video clip, an article to read, etc. It can be anything that students can observe and provokes questioning.
QUESTIONS--I then allow time for my students to work collaboratively to ask and record questions about this phenomenon. This MUST BE A SAFE SPACE for my learners so they are uninhibited and feel as if they can think for themselves.
INVESTIGATION--Once students have recorded their questions, they have an opportunity to investigate. This is usually a laboratory experiment and/or information they read and work through. This is typically done without my assistance and many times, my students struggle. THIS IS OKAY! They should. In fact, I want them to. The hardest part for me during this part is to not help them. I guide them, keep them focused, and address misconceptions.
TASKS--Finally, students have a task that addresses both teacher and student generated questions sparked from the phenomenon and utilizes knowledge gained from the investigations to answer the questions.
How Has Inquiry Transformed My Classroom?
TEACHER POINT OF VIEW
I think differently as a teacher in an inquiry based classroom and the students engage the material on a different, more personal level. Instructional choices depend on the needs of the student. With this in mind, I have chosen lessons that lend themselves to inquiry based learning. Where before I might have focused on the content, now I focus on how students are performing in the space provided.
I focus instead on front loading my lessons and how to use my content knowledge to help establish the learning experience by choosing the best phenomenon that represents the lesson, how to facilitate discussion over questions and tasks, and how to set up an investigation, complete with procedures, sources, etc.
I have learned to listen more to my students, to see the struggle from their position. Make no doubt about it, inquiry is messy, but this messiness reflects how learning typically happens. The structure I provide brings structure to the inquiry, but not to the degree that a traditional, teacher centered classroom does.
STUDENT POINT OF VIEW
Students are more motivated and proud of their learning. Challenging the complacent, teacher centered classroom is the more difficult, often at first resented view that students hate having to think. If students are moaning and groaning at having to think, then it is sign you're moving in the right direction.
Students have a greater energy as they dig into the work and go to work thinking critically, challenging their own understanding through constant reflection, and working together because to do so gives all members a distinctive edge against the messiness of inquiry.
The best compliment that students give is when they say "Class is already over?" because they're so engaged they've lost track of time because they've gotten lost in their own intellectual pursuits.