How to Adjust When You Feel Inquiry Isn’t Working
What happens when you align your curriculum and learning experiences and you get blank stares?
What happens when you intentionally choose a thinking routine to structure small group conversations and evidence learning and the students don’t produce what you expect?
What happens when your students aren’t producing the questions you’ve anticipated, or any questions for that matter?
What happens when we use the routines, structures and model language ever so mindfully and still our students seem lost?
These are the very questions that were the undercurrent of a planning and reflection session I had with a teacher this week as we were meeting up again to begin to outline a free inquiry project she thought her students were ready to engage in at the start of this new semester. These are the questions I carried with me after our 45 minute planning block had ended and the very ones I bring you today.
What Inquiry Is…and what It Isn’t
Inquiry is not a checklist.
Inquiry is not one action.
Inquiry is not something we can print off the copier and expect to just unfold.
Inquiry is a way being. It’s our mindset. It’s the collection of all of our actions that show our learners we are curious about them, taking careful notice about the ways that their actions inform our next steps as facilitators. It’s not something that’s easily done in isolation and takes a community to come together to make it happen.
What do you notice about the evidence that your students are showing you?
How can you scaffold to meet them where they are at, not where you expect them to be?
And, how can we come together as an inquiry community to support one another as you reflect on your practice and engage in active dialogue about your teaching?
So, what did we notice in our reflection with one another?
We noticed that the students didn’t have the language they needed to formulate the questions the teacher was hoping the provocation would elicit.
We noticed that the students lacked the vocabulary to be able to communicate their thinking more fully.
We noticed, although not intentional, that the teacher was doing most of the talking, most of the day.
We noticed that the teacher hadn’t clearly defined what she was looking for not only for herself, but also for her students.
And finally, we noticed that the evidence she had collected was quite critical in what we were unpacking together.
How to Improve Your Inquiry Practice
With these reflections in hand, we had our next steps. None of these, of course, would be a simple experience or conversation held with the students. We jotted down the following list as a reminder of what to consider each week as we were planning curriculum with one another and ones that she could return to as she was informally assessing where her students.
What could we do to step back and allow more space for students to share their thinking and questions with one another? Create and use an anchor chart with sentence stems (ex: This is making me wonder about… or I’m curious as to why…., etc.) and words to scaffold student questions and conversations with one another.
How could we scaffold the language we wanted student to use? Identify key vocabulary words as it relates to curriculum topics. Share these with students with students
How could we continue to allow more space outside of the curriculum for students to stretch their questioning skills and further embed a culture of curiosity in the classroom? Model language during morning meetings and community circle time. Encourage students to use sentence stems as a structure from peer conversations.
How could the teacher conformably step back to allow students more space to practice these skills? Create a space, using loose parts, for students to tinker with materials, play and document their thinking and wonders. Listen to student conversations, document noticings and model own curiosities about the things they are creating and making!
