Expected, Inspected, & Respected.
"We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience."
-John Dewey |
"We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience."
-John Dewey |
For the past 5 weeks, I've been trying to get my Grade 8 class to ask good questions, find the answers, and share their findings in a meaningful way through the inquiry process. The topic to be interrogated was ancient Greece and Rome. This post will cover the general process I used to guide them through the inquiry, as well as my thoughts on how it went. Asking Questions I thought it would be fitting to begin this inquiry based unit by asking the class a question: What do you notice about this painting? This question was a good place to start because it was open-ended and there were no wrong answers. It was also a great way to introduce them to the idea of using popsicle sticks to solicit answers. After asking the question and giving them time to examine the picture, I drew names from the cup and asked them to share their observation(s). Although the students didn't like it at first, I think this randomizer is a wonderful pedagogical tool and that all teachers should be using them. It prevents a handful of eager students from dominating classroom conversations while the rest of the class checks out. The tough part about it for me was remembering to give sufficient wait time after asking a question. I try to only use hands-up when students want to ask me questions. (To see Dylan Wiliam explain this and a few other simple and effective classroom strategies, watch this BBC documentary. It's really great.) Next, we practiced generating questions about the painting using the question formulation technique. I gave them 4 minutes to complete page 1. Most of the students understood what was expected of them from the instructions on the worksheets, but several students were confused. Next time, I will provide a more thorough demonstration of how to complete the sheets so that there are absolutely no misunderstandings about how to proceed. We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of closed and open-ended questions together as a class when they were finished. During the next class, I assessed their prior knowledge about ancient Greece by producing a Pencil/Pen/Stone chart together with the class. On a big piece of chart paper, I labelled three columns with Pencil, Pen, and Stone. Then, my students shared factoids about ancient Greece and told me to record them in the Pencil column if they weren't too sure if it was true, in the Pen column if they were pretty sure it was true, and in the Stone column if they were absolutely sure it was true. Unfortunately, my students' confidence surpassed their knowledge and some corrections were necessary. Mistakes were expected though, and correcting their misconceptions was a good learning opportunity. In order to assess whether or not my students understood the difference between closed-ended and open-ended questions, as well as to get them thinking about possible topics of inquiry, I asked them to go through the QFT again, this time posing all the questions they could think of about ancient Greece or Rome. Then, they had to identify two closed-ended questions and one open-ended question from the list they generated. Finding Answers Once they had their questions, I asked them to find the answers to those questions in the books I had taken out from the Winnipeg Public Library and the Manitoba Curriculum Support Centre. After this assessment had been completed, I introduced the idea of a major project based on finding answers to an essential question. Because I wanted to give them lots of choice in this project, I told them that they could work by themselves or in groups of their own choosing. If I were to do it again, I would randomize groupings as well because most groups ended up being clustered according to academic ability. This made the quality of the finished projects very unbalanced. It would have been beneficial for struggling students to learn from more successful ones how to organize themselves and stay on task. I asked the groups to get together to share some of their favourite questions from their QFT about ancient Greece and Rome and gave them some time to look through the books again and discuss what might become their essential question. While they discussed and did preliminary research, I circulated, meeting with groups about their main question, suggesting that groups narrow, broaden or change them completely as necessary. I provided groups with this template for taking notes: Every time I gave the class a period to work on their projects, I required them to fill out this Quick Peer Evaluation Form as a way to keep groups on task and as a way to assess individual contributions to the group effort. Sharing Findings In the interest of providing further student choice, I left it wide open as to how they wanted to demonstrate their learning at the end of the project. We brainstormed to think of different ways that they could share their learning. Every group but one chose to use power point and most of them made the mistake of presenting a series of text dense slides which they simply read off the screen - even after I warned them not to make this rookie mistake. I think it would have been more valuable to teach them the Pecha Kucha method of presenting: 20 slides with pictures at 20 seconds each and only an outline of what to say. Most people are like water and choose the path of least resistance and I don't blame them for choosing something safe, relatively easy, and familiar. Making every student use the same presentation method would have given the students a new tool that would be useful to them in the future and would have been easier for me to grade as well. Speaking of grading, I also gave my students a voice in how the inquiry project should be assessed. Together, we brainstormed applicable criteria: I put these criteria into three main categories, And produced this rubric: I was surprised that, even after showing the class easybib.com and bibme.org, only a few groups took advantage of them by putting their sources in proper MLA format to receive full marks for research. At the end of the presentations, I wanted them to do some metacognition, thinking deeply and reflecting on the inquiry process. I asked them to answer these questions: I compiled a list of their pros and cons and shared with the class. I also told them what I thought of the whole thing: As a culminating activity, the class participated in a spider web discussion. This type of discussion doesn't work well with groups over 15 people, so I randomly divided the class in two groups using the popsicle sticks, and had them take turns observing in the outer circle while the other group discussed the question at the table. The first group was asked the question, "What are the pros and cons of learning through inquiry?" The second group was asked, "What is something interesting that you learned about while researching or listening to the presentations?" I knew that this discussion would be dominated by a few of the stronger students but the purpose of the exercise was to get everyone to share at least once. So I told them that this activity would be a pass/fail activity. If everyone shared, everyone would get full marks, but if anyone failed to share, no one would receive any marks. Using grades as a carrot for motivation did not feel good because, as I've stated before, I don't believe it's good for students. However, since the instructions suggested using grades at first and removing them later, I went with it. I didn't take part in the discussion at all but let the students lead while I diagrammed the conversation. It was a stilted, unnatural, and awkward conversation. And even though many students tried gently asking questions of their more reserved peers, there were some in both groups who refused to take part. Grades were obviously not much of a motivator for these students. You can tell by the charted conversation that I should have reminded them not to sit beside their friends. I was disappointed that the inquiry process took much longer than anticipated and I had to jettison a really great debate activity from the Stanford History Education Group about whether or not Athens was a true democracy. Next time, I would do the Athens democracy activity first and give the class less time for inquiry. Perhaps there would be more focussed work done by students during class time with a tighter timeline.
A lot of good learning took place over the last five weeks but I feel like I might have learned more than my students. In the future, I'll have to flip that on its head.
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David Wiebe
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