Inquiry-Based Learning

We can't accomplish much in a second. Blink. Breathe. Take a step forward. We can do 60 times as much in a minute, and 3,600 times as much in an hour. Our truly great accomplishments come from combining the little things we do in seconds into long, complex processes that take days or weeks or months.

Learning is one such process. None of us is born walking, but one of us became Usain Bolt. None of us is born writing, but one of us became J.K. Rowling. They learned how to do what they do through a long, involved process. Whether training for an Olympic 100m race or beginning work on a new novel, people who are doing something difficult follow a similar process called inquiry.

What are the steps in the inquiry process?

The inquiry process consists of six steps that can help any novice become an expert in any discipline.

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If you teach in an inquiry- or project-based classroom, you probably use guiding questions to help your students really dig into a topic. Well, now that summer is officially upon us, it's time to consider what questions will guide your summer and help you really dig in. Here's a list of 100 guiding questions that can help you get the most out of this season. Pick a question from the list, or let the ideas here inspire you to fashion your own. Then get busy with your summer of inquiry!

1. What self-improvement should I do this summer?
2. What positive health habit can I adopt?
3. What is my most negative health habit, and how can I end it?
4. What is my biggest physical complaint, and how can I get rid of it?
5. How can I get outside more?
6. What activity can I do with friends?
7. What preventive care should I do this summer?
8. How can I improve my attitude and outlook?
9. How can I become happier?
10. What part of my personality would I most like to change, and how?
11. How can I better manage stress and anxiety?
12. What self-talk do I do, and how can I make it more positive?
13. How can I improve my energy and strength?
14. What new hairstyle should I try?
15. What shift in fashion would make me feel better about myself?

How can you shift your classroom away from lecture and toward inquiry? You can get help from the modern phenomenon known as crowdsourcing—the practice of putting many minds to work on a single problem. Inquiry is, in effect, crowdsourcing in your classroom.

What Crowdsourcing Concepts Can Help Me?

The following four concepts from crowdsourcing can help you use more inquiry in your classroom.

1. Distributed Computing. While the term crowdsourcing is relatively new, the idea has been around for a while. One early example is the University of Berkley’s SETI project (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), started in 1999, with over three million people devoting time on their personal computers to process radio signals. Other projects put crowds of human brains to work on even thornier problems. Just last September, over the course of three weeks, Fold.It gamers decoded an AIDS protein that scientists had been struggling with for 15 years. And inspired by the success of Fold.It, EyeWire.org recently launched a project asking people to help color-code neurons in the human retina.

   Classroom Application

   • A starting point for distributed computing in your classroom is to have students create their own unit overviews. Here’s how. Instead of lecturing to introduce a new unit, assign partners or groups to find out about specific topics in the unit. For example, to introduce a unit on the Civil War, you could list topics such as battles, generals, causes, public opinion, economics, technology, media, casualties, and so on. Then ask partners or groups to select a topic to investigate. Take the class to the library or media center for a half-hour inquiry into their topics. Afterward, have each group report briefly on what they discovered. This distributed-computing approach engages students and fosters research, collaboration, and presentation skills. It also covers the high points of the topic through crowdsourcing instead of lecture.
   • A next step is to have students help develop the tools for assessing their work. Ask students what they want to accomplish—what excellent work would look like. Involve them in creating a rubric. This brainstorming process works even for young students, as is shown in this video about a bridge-building class. By involving students in creating the tools for their assessment, you get buy-in from them and often end up with a more rigorous assessment tool than you would otherwise have.
   • When you and your students gain real comfort with distributed computing, you might have them participate in planning the semester’s syllabus. Have them brainstorm what makes a successful learning experience. Present the core standards on which they’ll be tested, and ask for project ideas to reach those goals. Gather student suggestions on the board and then guide a discussion analyzing how to implement them. By enlisting students in this part of their education, you show that they are responsible for their own learning. You also teach them the metacognitive skills they need to be lifelong learners.
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Do you know what a mouse potato is? It’s a person who spends too much time staring at a computer screen. Mouse potatoes are the couch potatoes of the 21st century. In fact, Merriam Webster just added the term mouse potato to its august dictionary.

Perhaps you know a few mouse potatoes. Perhaps you are one. But just learning the term mouse potato suddenly makes you think about how much time you spend in front of the computer. That’s the power of vocabulary. It enables thinking. The size of your vocabulary impacts the size of your mental world.

Vocabulary as Inquiry

All right, so you’re saying, “Here we go—vocabulary. It’s so elementary.” Yes, it is—as in the word element: the building blocks of everything. In fact, the origin of the word elementum is the first three letters of the Canaanite alphabet. When we talk about elements, we are reciting our Canaanite ABCs.

Do you see how one word—elementary—has taken us from language arts to science to social studies? Do you see how knowing that elementum is the same as ABCs influences how we think about the Periodic Table of the Elements, about elementary school, about Holmes’s constant insistence that it is “elementary, my dear Watson”?

A word doesn’t have just one meaning. It is freighted with meaning. In its prefixes, roots, and suffixes, each word stores the DNA of human experience.

Vocabulary therefore shouldn’t be rote memorization. It should be inquiry.

So you’ve heard of the 4 C’s—critical thinking, creative thinking, communicating, and collaborating—but how are you supposed to teach your own subject and the 4 C’s?

The good news is that the 4 C’s help you teach your subject. They aren’t content. They’re skills for gaining content. Here are 3 simple steps that use the 4 C’s to help students learn your subject:

Step 1: Prompt Critical and Creative Thinking

After introducing and modeling a new concept, prompt students to think critically and creatively about it. Assign a 5-minute activity that students complete individually. Here are some examples:

• Sentence completion: Ask students to complete a sentence in as many ways as possible.
  Complete the following sentence in as many ways as you can: “The cell membrane helps the cell by . . .”
• Definitions: Ask students to define a key term, providing its denotation, along with examples, synonyms, and antonyms.
  Define the term “executive branch,” giving examples, synonyms, and antonyms.
• Problem solving: Ask students to list ways that a problem could be solved.
  List as many ways as you can think of that global economic inequality could be reduced.
• Clustering: Ask students to write an important concept in the center of a piece of paper and to create as many personal connections as they can to it.
  Write “Supply and Demand” in the middle of a piece of paper and circle it. Around it, write ways supply and demand affect your life.
• Modeling: Ask students to represent a concept visually, whether in a sketch, a diagram, a symbol, or some other form.
  Create a visual representation of entropy—a drawing, diagram, graph, or other visual.
• Questioning: Ask students to write five questions about the current topic and to pick the most interesting one.
  Write down five questions you have about logarithms and pick the most interesting one.

Though you may be unfamiliar with the inquiry process, you use it every day. For example, imagine that you need to go grocery shopping:

You start with questions: “What do we need? What do we want for dinner this week? What could I fix quickly when I get back?”
You open cabinets, check pantries, grill family members. You make a list, clip coupons, consider specials, decide how much money you can spend.
You go to the grocery store and cruise aisle to aisle. You consider prices, ounces, brand names, varieties. Items get scratched off the list.
It’s time to buy the stuff. You provide coupons, pay your money, lug the stuff home, and put it away.
That’s when you realize that you got fat-free butter (fat free butter?!) and your kids tell you they don’t like diet root beer.
You tell them that they can do the grocery shopping next time. Then you start to make dinner—and launch into the inquiry process once again.

The inquiry process should be familiar because it’s the way we move from where we are to where we want to be.

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