Weather- Rain
Welcome to our website!
Meet the Inquiry team:
Aoife Dineen
Vanessa Lanigan
Marie Hustvedt
What does the term "inquiry" mean?
According to the Collins English dictionary, Inquiry is the process of asking about or investigating something in order to find out more about it.
Connect
The "Connect" step of the Stripling Model of Inquiry helps children connect their prior knowledge and experiences with the topic at hand. By doing this, children can develop a deeper understanding of the topic and its relevance. This step can be especially helpful for children who are new to a topic or struggling to understand its importance
Wonder
In choosing this phase we thought that an allocation to a phase completely focused on giving the opportunity for children to wonder and ask their own questions was essecencial in promoting a meaningful inquiry in the classroom in which the children are intrested in and want to learn more about their questions and have increased authority and engagement overall in their learning. “When students choose their own questions they are motivavted to learn and develop a sense of ownership over the project.(Education Development Center,Inc.,2016p.1).
“students engaged in inquiry are more motivated to pursue learning on their own than students who are fed pre-organized information that they are expected to remember.”(Stripling,2008,p.50)
Investigate
The investigation stage allows the children to form their own hoypothesis and methods of investiagtion to test these hypothesis. This promotes children using their previous related knowledge on different subjects to form meaninful connections to the new content they are learning allowing children to generate further questions and hypothesis. The investigation stage also promotes students centered learning in which student work collaberatively to test their questions and the teacher acts as a guide to scaffold their learning. Knowledge is Gained when “people come together to exchange ideas, articulate their problems from their own perspectives, and construct meanings that makes sense to them.” ( Mordechai,2009,p.738)
Construct
The construct phase is where the children look back at how their investigations have extended their prior learnings from the connect phase. The children also look back at their questions and make a conclusion from what they thought would happen and if their investigation answerd their initial questions.
"This phase is probably the most difficult for both teachers and students because it involves
teaching students to organize and draw conclusions from information they have found, to confront conflicting
ideas and form their own evidence-based opinions, and to be ready to take a stand and defend." (Stripling, 2009, p. 3)
Express
Using all of the prior phases fo the inquiry cycle, the students is now expected to put their learnings into something they can express to others. When they express their learnings, they make a product they can be proud of and thus making it more personal and easier to remember and connect to other contexts. This phase opens the possibility for the children to be creative with how they want to express themselves and they could use different medias such as make a video, make a presentation or use art.
“The Express phase is essential to inquiry learning because, when students develop a product to
demonstrate their new understandings and share with others, they solidify their own learning.” (Stripling, 2009, p.3)
Reflect
The "Reflect" step of the Stripling Cycle encourages children to reflect on their learning and the process they used to get there. This step is essential for helping children develop metacognitive skills - or the ability to think about their own thinking. By reflecting on their learning, children can identify what worked well, what they struggled with, and what they can do differently in the future. This can help them become more self-aware and independent learners.
Why We Chose To Use The 'Stripling Model of Inquiry'.
The arrows pointed back and forth, highlighting the possibility doing the cycle different ways, not just doing one direction all the time
The express phase made us curious and we liked that it emphasised the value of expressing the findings and new knowledge to others which we thouguht fitted the use in primary schools.
How Would We Change This Inquiry Model?
What changes/modifications would we make: If we where to look at this inquiry from a critical perspective we would say that this model appears to be very text heavy with a lack of visual representation. To make this inquity cycle more apporpriate for visual learners in the classroom, we would add in some images displaying the possible steps that children could take when exploring each stage of this Inquiry Cycle. This way children have a clear represenataion of a starting point they can choose when coming up with their individual efforts of exploring their own investigations and questions.
Have reflection as a continuously and ongoing action
Change arrow to have no corners so looks more like a circle shape
Guided inquiry cycle: We are using guided Inquiry in this investigation as the children are using the 'Stripling Model' of inquiry and exploring a set question we agreed on as a class.
Big idea- Rain is a form of precipitation produced through the water cycle, and it is essential for sustaining life on Earth.
Our Class:
We chose to implement this investigation with 3rd or 4th class.
We felt that many of the children in this age group would not have much experience, of learning about the water cycle or the concept of rain. So we felt that this class would be a great age group to explore this topic in an investigative and Inquiry based nature.
According to Piaget, students at this age are at the 'Concrete Operational Stage' of developement and excel in learning through hands on experiences and collaboration with others.
Three key concepts:
Formation, causation, and function.