Phase III: Finishing the Inquiry

IDM Design Path flyer.pdf

Phase III is the finishing work of developing an Inquiry Blueprint. We're going to take on all four steps in this final phase now and wrap up your work on the blueprint. You'll see on the left that there are actually four steps in Phase III.

Creating Curiosity by Staging the Compelling Question
Making Connections with Extension Tasks
Taking it to the Bridge with Informed Action
Finishing an Inquiry by Looking Vertically

Three of these steps are to develop modular or optional tasks. You could implement your inquiry with what you have right now---questions, tasks, and sources. Our finishing touches in Phase III move in new directions given the time and interests that you have with these additional tasks.

Creating Curiosity by Staging the Compelling Question

This is a relatively simple task that will open your inquiry. It's the first thing that students will do in the inquiry. Think of this task as a chance to activate students prior knowledge or to make a connection between the compelling question and something they already know. Students probably do not need to spend much time on this task. Do not think of the staging task as a time to introduce too much (if any) new content.

Making Connections with Extension Tasks

In the way that the staging task opens the inquiry, the extension can (if you choose to) close the inquiry. The extension comes after students have completed the summative performance task and have made their argument. This is an opportunity for students to share what they have learning and represented in their inquiry with other audiences or in different modalities.

Taking it to the Bridge with Informed Action

We all know that the ultimate purpose of social studies is to prepare children participate as active citizens in our democracy. But, we often struggle to provide students with opportunities to do the things we do as citizens. Through the Taking Informed Action task, IDM provides a purposeful opportunity to hardwire civic action into students' learning experiences. Taking Informed Action consist of three parts, understanding a problem related to the topic of the inquiry, students assessing their capacity to take action on the problem, and then actually taking action. Read more about Taking Informed Action in these two pieces.

Participatory Literacy and Taking Informed Action in the Social Studies by Casey Holmes and Meghan Manfra

Be the Change: Guiding Students to Take Informed Action by Carly Muetterties and Kathy Swan

Finishing an Inquiry by Looking Vertically

The final step in the design process is to check your work. Look back across the inquiry and make sure everything lines up. You've been doing this all along as you design so the supporting questions unpacked the compelling question and hung together in a logical sequence reflecting unfolding content. You did the same with the series of formative performance tasks in making sure they build in complexity and provide students with opportunities to build their knowledge and practice with inquiry and disciplinary skills. You also made sure to have some variety in your sources. When finishing the inquiry, you are looking over your inquiry in a vertical manner. Make sure that each connected supporting question, formative tasks and related sources work together to accomplish your goals.

Design Challenge #7

This is the final design challenge, finishing the inquiry. Here we are combining steps 7-10 in the IDM design process. In this challenge you should think about how you want to set up the inquiry with a staging the compelling question tasks. Also, think about how you want to end the inquiry with the extension and taking informed action task. Finish by doing one more check on your blueprint by looking vertically to make sure everything works as planned.

Return to your IDM Design doc and add your staging, extension, and taking informed action task. Add each of these task to your IDM working blueprint. Remember to keep it brief on the blueprint. Everything needs to fit on one page! Make any final adjustments with all of the blueprint elements as needed to insure the best design possible.

Wheh finished with this final phase of the design process, please proceed to our concluding section on Implementing your Inquiry.

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