How can students effectively develop their own learning pathway through questioning?

Learners of Grade 5 take ownership of their learning: to design their own inquiry.

While the grade 5 learners were engaged in the Exhibition unit on How We Express Ourselves, feedback from our learners indicated that what they wanted most was ownership of their learning in their own areas of interest.

Students engaged in framing their own Central Idea.

Teachers scaffolded the process of designing questions to guide this inquiry.

In the beginning learners were asked to identify an area of interest for their own inquiry and describe it as a line of inquiry in the format beginning with “An inquiry into…” They justified their proposed inquiry by stating its connection to our related concepts. They shared their lines of inquiry with their teachers.

Teachers challenged their students to think about what different kinds of research their questions would require, such as factual, conceptual or debatable. This process led to valuable discussion with open ended questions.

Some of the Central Idea students co constructed were