Inquiry teaching is easy. Just follow this recipe from Kimberly Lasher Mitchell:
No problem, right? Well. . .
When I first started my adventures teaching and learning at NIST, I found this list to be a complete and concise summary of what I had discovered over my previous two years of devoted experimentation with inquiry. It would have been so much easier to have been given these ideas and a range of guided inquiry practices from the beginning. That being said, I might not have learned as much that way and am surprisingly grateful for the lack of support that fueled my insatiable desire to learn how to facilitate inquiry in my classroom.
As a new PYP teacher, I was explicitly told that teaching inquiry in the PYP was very difficult. It was explained that everyone takes years to understand how to really do it and I would reach my magical "ah ha!" moment in a few years so it was acceptable not to know anything yet. Of course, I found it completely unacceptable to claim to teach with an inquiry approach without really knowing how to do so. Every year counts (a lot) in a child's education!
Ironically enough, after all my reading, collaborating and contacting of experts at other schools, I did have my "ah ha!" moment about a year into my PYP teaching experience. This moment happened at an optional weekend training about Philosophy for Children, or P4C.
- Provoke discussion and challenge thinking
- Stay neutral and judgement free
- Invite elaboration
- Honor theories- even wrong ones
- Guide students to listen to each other
- Assess student knowledge and understanding
- Remind students to cite all sources and evaluate them
- Employ plenty of wait time
- Articulate students’ implied connections
- Use the IB learning profile to elicit responses and to teach debating skills
No problem, right? Well. . .
When I first started my adventures teaching and learning at NIST, I found this list to be a complete and concise summary of what I had discovered over my previous two years of devoted experimentation with inquiry. It would have been so much easier to have been given these ideas and a range of guided inquiry practices from the beginning. That being said, I might not have learned as much that way and am surprisingly grateful for the lack of support that fueled my insatiable desire to learn how to facilitate inquiry in my classroom.
As a new PYP teacher, I was explicitly told that teaching inquiry in the PYP was very difficult. It was explained that everyone takes years to understand how to really do it and I would reach my magical "ah ha!" moment in a few years so it was acceptable not to know anything yet. Of course, I found it completely unacceptable to claim to teach with an inquiry approach without really knowing how to do so. Every year counts (a lot) in a child's education!
Ironically enough, after all my reading, collaborating and contacting of experts at other schools, I did have my "ah ha!" moment about a year into my PYP teaching experience. This moment happened at an optional weekend training about Philosophy for Children, or P4C.
What is P4C?
It is a simple, ten-step, guided inquiry framework that works. It can be played with and varied to meet all age levels and instructional needs but at its core, this is it:
So how does P4C connect to PYP?
1. Take any PYP unit that you are about to facilitate. For example, earlier in the school year we inquired into the How the World Works unit with this Central Idea: Extreme natural events challenge humans to respond and adapt.
2. Think about a great stimulus that would provoke students to engage with the Central Idea and come up with global, arguable questions. We chose a series of photographs showing the aftermath of extreme natural events.
3. Guide students to create questions that relate to the world, rather than just the photographs (if they ask about a specific damaged house in one photo, guide them to generalize the damage to all similar events and property instead). Ensure that questions are arguable instead of just the "Google-able" yes-no type. This simple four quadrant image has been helpful for illustrating this point in my classes (credit to the Pocket P4C resource by prolific P4C writer, and my personal favorite expert in all things P4C, Jason Buckley).
2. Think about a great stimulus that would provoke students to engage with the Central Idea and come up with global, arguable questions. We chose a series of photographs showing the aftermath of extreme natural events.
3. Guide students to create questions that relate to the world, rather than just the photographs (if they ask about a specific damaged house in one photo, guide them to generalize the damage to all similar events and property instead). Ensure that questions are arguable instead of just the "Google-able" yes-no type. This simple four quadrant image has been helpful for illustrating this point in my classes (credit to the Pocket P4C resource by prolific P4C writer, and my personal favorite expert in all things P4C, Jason Buckley).
4. Let those thinkers think! Sit back and record relevant thoughts, questions, examples and misconceptions.
5. Use your recorded student questions and thinking to guide the inquiry. We have found great success this school year writing Lines of Inquiry based on student questions and thinking that come out in the P4C sessions.
For example, after showing the series of photos after natural disasters, these questions were generated and discussed across different classes in Year 5:
Questions:
If you have a lot of wealth, do you have more advantages (to survive) in a natural disaster?
What happens after the disaster?
What should we do if a natural disaster comes?
How do people survive in natural disasters?
What should people do in a natural disaster?
Examples of relevant notes from class discussions:
Research questions also arose related to causes of natural disasters and aid in the relief of disasters.
Curious about warning signs of natural disasters and systems for early storm/disaster detection.
Misconception- You can’t tell that a tornado is coming.
In a teaching team discussion, we came up with the following Lines of Inquiry to align with our pre-determined Social Studies and Science knowledge base, honor student thinking and allow the unit to truly be student-driven.
An inquiry into:
The coolest part? Watching units change each year based on the students in each group! The following year we started with a similar Central Idea: Extreme natural events challenge humans to respond, adapt and innovate.
We decided to use this great video as a stimulus instead: https://vimeo.com/99672779.
You know what happened? The student questions, misconceptions and prior knowledge led us to these Lines of Inquiry instead:
An inquiry into:
When we listen, we can actually respond to students instead of our own plan of how the unit is "meant" to go.
The results? Pure student engagement. Student-driven learning. Genuine inquiry. Teachers as facilitators.
5. Use your recorded student questions and thinking to guide the inquiry. We have found great success this school year writing Lines of Inquiry based on student questions and thinking that come out in the P4C sessions.
For example, after showing the series of photos after natural disasters, these questions were generated and discussed across different classes in Year 5:
Questions:
If you have a lot of wealth, do you have more advantages (to survive) in a natural disaster?
What happens after the disaster?
What should we do if a natural disaster comes?
How do people survive in natural disasters?
What should people do in a natural disaster?
Examples of relevant notes from class discussions:
Research questions also arose related to causes of natural disasters and aid in the relief of disasters.
Curious about warning signs of natural disasters and systems for early storm/disaster detection.
Misconception- You can’t tell that a tornado is coming.
In a teaching team discussion, we came up with the following Lines of Inquiry to align with our pre-determined Social Studies and Science knowledge base, honor student thinking and allow the unit to truly be student-driven.
An inquiry into:
- what causes extreme natural events (causation)
- survival in extreme natural events (connection)
- human response to extreme natural events (responsibility)
The coolest part? Watching units change each year based on the students in each group! The following year we started with a similar Central Idea: Extreme natural events challenge humans to respond, adapt and innovate.
We decided to use this great video as a stimulus instead: https://vimeo.com/99672779.
You know what happened? The student questions, misconceptions and prior knowledge led us to these Lines of Inquiry instead:
An inquiry into:
- how challenges drive innovation
- the need to adjust in different ways over time
When we listen, we can actually respond to students instead of our own plan of how the unit is "meant" to go.
The results? Pure student engagement. Student-driven learning. Genuine inquiry. Teachers as facilitators.
More fantastic resources for those P4C and inquiry curiosities!
- My class blog full of on-going examples: http://blogs.nist.ac.th/5ss/
- P4C by Sapere: http://www.sapere.org.uk/default.aspx?tabid=162
- P4C Resources: http://p4c.com
- Prolific P4C Thinking Games and Stimuli Author, Jason Buckley’s, Website: http://www.thephilosophyman.com/
- Harvard’s Visible Thinking Website: http://www.pz.gse.harvard.edu/visible_thinking.php
- Visible Thinking Routines Online Resource Bank: http://www.visiblethinkingpz.org/VisibleThinking_html_files/03_ThinkingRoutines/03a_ThinkingRoutines.html