Addressing gaps in the classroom:

Addressing gaps in the classroom: Inquiry Learning

I have noticed that in order to teach through inquiry students require prior knowledge of developing higher level thinking questions. I found when I asked students what they were wondering we were stuck recording questions at a basic fact level ex. What do skinks eat? Where do they live? I was leading the inquiry by developing the higher level thinking question for students to answer/research ex. What might happen to skinks if humans continue to develop communities in their habitat? My goal is to teach students how to develop higher level questions so that students can direct their own learning.

After reading Skink on the Brink by Lisa Dalrymple I asked the students what do they wonder about skinks.

We used the generating question chart from the text Q-Tasks to sort the questions we came up with. 

Look at our results - Our next step is to work on developing questions that fit on the right hand side of the chart. I'm going to read another picture book for students to generate questions. MODEL and Practice