Inquiry

At D39C, we create a culture of curiosity through inquiry-driven learning. Inquiry is about engagement and involvement of students in active sense-making in meaningful acts of learning. Classroom lessons and activities are designed around connecting students to ideas and content in a way that helps them see why the study matters. In addition, students will be asking their own questions and answering them in ways that are meaningful to them. Our focus is on setting the stage for students to understand. We help students see how context drives decisions, ask questions to clarify an issue, probe deeper to understand why things work the way they do, and discover the forces at work in our natural world and how they impact life on this planet.

"...how learning happens isn’t as important as whether that learning encourages students to try to learn even more."

--Lehmann

"Creativity, problem-solving, design thinking, and critical analysis are learnable skills that benefit from intentional instruction."

--Thom Markham

The Keys to Inquiry: Harvard Project Zero

  • The environment needs to support risk-taking in learning

  • The curriculum needs to allow for some uncertainty and ambiguity about exactly what children will learn

  • Students need opportunities to learn forms of thinking that embody risk-taking and openness

Our adult facilitators use different types of inquiry to engage students:

  • Open - Students define the question and the process

  • Guided - Teachers define the question and kids decide the process

  • Structured - Teachers define the question and provide process, students give evidence to support results (CCSS)

Beginning Guidelines:

  • Inquiry learning has to be tied to purposeful assessment.

  • Create a culture of curiosity

  • Be compassionate and concerned with the ethics

  • The process has to engage students in active sense-making

  • Time cannot be the driving force behind projects.