The way INQUIRY has changed my teaching

When I started using Inquiry Circles in the classroom 4 years ago I had no idea what was in store for the students in my classroom or for the growth and change of philosophy that I would experience.

I started by pouring over the book Comprehension & Collaboration: Inquiry Circles Illuminated by Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels.  (Click on picture for link to purchase this book.)

The book excited me and made me feel scared.  I was scared that I was going to lose control.  Control over learning, grades, motivation, organization, and the list goes on.  My desire to see inquiry circles in the classroom outweighed my fear of losing control...so I finally hit the go button! Sitting here now knowing what I know now I'm so thankful that I decided to leap into the unknowns.

The start of my journey:

Confession:  I used to be a control freak.  Some may say I still am but trust me I've mellowed out A LOT!  So back when I was a control freak I had to have a very decisive plan and inquiry felt a bit unstructured to me having taught more traditionally (I do, We do, You do).  I created documents to help guide my teaching and here is the first set,

Inquiry Circles: Getting started

From the get go I started to see a transition in my class and within myself. Below is part of a blog post from 4 years ago,

 Here's a little inspirational note about Inquiry Circles.  A child in my class has been very dejected.  Life at home isn't great....his parents are fighting :(  It has really shown itself at school.  He is a high level kid that has just been making it through the day...not learning fervently.  This child is in the group researching turtles.  He knows the inside and outside of every turtle book stored in the group's basket.  I sit down to do a mini-lesson with the group (the difference between reading with a question in mind vs. tracking your thinking while reading a book) and this kid just blows me away.  I decided to show the group what I mean and start with a question, How do turtles have their young?  He rips out four books flips to the pages and starts telling me all about it.  The other two students didn't stand a chance for keeping up.  So the two of us, him and I, laid it out for them successfully. He is smiling more often and told me after school that he loves to learn {be still my heart}!

Back then I was still holding tight to structure.  I used a specific conferring form, created a pack of inquiry circle student sheets, used a rubric and made detailed lessons that focused on organization.

Inquiry Circle Conferring form

Inquiry Circle Student Sheets

Inquiry Circle rubric

First Inquiry Circle Lesson Plans

And here are my lesson plans for the reptile inquiry circle.  You will noticed that I tried to hit important organizational lessons and some from our county roadmap.  **Note that we found that although we planned lessons most of the time our teaching came out of authenticity. The kids needed different material than we had anticipated.**

 

Inquiry Circle management pieces

By the end of the first inquiry I was sold.  I knew this component would be in my classroom for awhile. 

Changes I've made along the way: 

Along the way I have posted about inquiry circles and how they are working in my classroom.   There has been some major changes along the way.  Now, I embrace the unknown while knowing that whatever we discover will be amazing.

1. My ideas about structure started to change.  I let the students have more say in what they wanted to work on.  I became more flexible with groupings.  At the beginning of the year I would tend more towards groups and by the end of the year they could work alone, in pairs, triads or whatever they wanted.  Groupings started becoming more about interest and less about my desire to control.  I do have to say that at first I suggest working in groups of 4 or 5 because when it is new it is easier to support 4 or 5 groups rather than 12 groups.

2. My reading block makes way for inquiry first.  I start with a mini-lesson which is usually standard-based, then the students break off into their groupings to research while I support with conferring, and finally we meet back to share our new learning and thoughts.  At the beginning of an inquiry the lessons are about asking and answer questions, then I start honing in on other standards like text features.  I am able to teach to the standards while the students are choosing their interest, which is a win-win.

3.I let students lead.  I used to think the teacher led the class, boy was I wrong!  Now my students lead the class meaning that their thinking and interest push us forward.  At times I give them specifics on what I would like them to research and I usually tell them why. I'll say,  "In science we will be learning about extreme weather so for our next inquiry I would like you to think about weather that makes you wonder."  For the inquiry we just started I told the students that they needed to pick a living thing with a habitat and life cycle (which directly ties to our science for the next month).  

4. Because student motivation is so high, I quickly get to conferring with the students and understanding their thought process. I don't spend time trying to find just right books because the students are finding books of interest.  I just spend time listening to their thinking.  When you listen you discover.  Motivation also pushes the students to go out of their comfort zone when it come to reading.  Many times I have thought, "That book will be way too hard. That student won't get anything from it," and every time I've been wrong.

5. I am a facilitator.  I set the scene for success...that's my job now (and I love it).  I make sure students have the resources that they need.  The school library and county library get frequent visits from me (along with Goodwill).  I teach short mini-lessons that will lead to success.  I make rubrics and post language stems.  I tell the students why they are doing what they're doing.  I outline why it is purposeful and tell them how it has helped me in my own life.  

6. My learning is on display.  I'm gobsmacked daily by all the students teach me.  I show them how human I am daily.  I've caught myself saying, "That's not right.  Where did you find that?" with an accusatory tone and they always prove me wrong.  I show my imperfections all the time and I realize that I have so much to learn from these 7 year olds.  I feel so lucky that I get to use my brain daily and not do some boring, menial task.  I'm constantly stimulated and humbled by how much more I have to learn.

7.  Inquiry has taken over because it is contagious.  In every subject I find the students learn best when they are in control.  When we want to know why an author is good at writing, we inquire about it, research it and answer it for ourselves.  It's another instance of letting go and becoming a facilitator.  Kids are smart and they can figure out most things with the right resources.

Here are some inquiry pictures from over the past 4 years:

If you have a change to read the book listed above then I would say do it!  If you want to leap into inquiry I would say you'll never look back!!

Thinking about my signals

I'm currently reading The Smartest Kids in the World by Amanda Ripley (thanks Brian Dassler) and it has me thinking about the signals I give students.

The signal that I hope I give off is that I value thinking.  Some people have dogged the new standards but I feel like their intentions are valuable. I appreciate that my students are thinking at deeper levels.  One way I try to instill thinking is by modeling my own.  I try to do it in a natural way, struggling and all!  I want my students to see that I have to push myself just like they do.

This year I have come to rely on our journals in ALL subject areas.  What I love about journals is that students can track their progress in regards to their thinking.  It also gives them a reference point to refer to whenever they are struggling.  The materials I create for my students have language stems to help them organize and expand upon their thinking.

During the course of this year, I have created interactive journal material that I haven't shared....UNTIL NOW!

Here is a freebie/preview for you to check out:

InformationalLiteratureJournalPreview

I shared this standard that focuses on the main purpose of a text because I have found that my students need extra support!  In an informational book an author can explain, answer and describe to share their main purpose and sometimes that can be tricky to understand.  I also included a recording sheet that I explain more in the full product on TPT.

If you are interested in the full product, which has a journal activity for every Informational and Literature standard, check it out here:

TPT: 2nd Grade Interactive Journal for Informational and Literature Standards

If you aren't utilizing interactive journals, then I challenge you to try them. When planning activities for your students, think "What signals are the students getting from me?"

Informational Reading {the very beginning}

Last week we started our very first informational unit and I'm in LOVE!  My fiction and nonfiction libraries are separate this year and not too many firsties have wondered over to the nonfiction area....until now :)

 

I don't teach informational books while focusing on a specific topic, like bats, because I like to use what I'm seeing as their interest in class.  So if I notice that all the boys are flocking to the snakes bin, then I'm more than likely going to use a snake book the next day.  So far we read about semi-trucks, rabbits, dogs, bats, and bugs.  I figure that this is what real readers do, they read about their interest.  For example, an adult reading on the internet sees something of interest and clicks on it.  They might continue to research that topic or they might find something else of interest.

 

Authentic reading is my goal!

 

Here is how we have started out...

Day 1

Day 2- I don't usually get them started with post-its right away but this year I changed my thinking.  What if I exposed them to the greater picture first and then honed in on the details of each?  It's working!

This is the copy I made for their book bin.

This was DAY 3 and as you can see I started to hone in on information strategies.

I decided to do my text features poster a little different this year and it's pretty busy, huh?  What I do love about it is that the arrows and post-it explanations are removable so I can use it as an assessment with the kids.  "Name the text features by placing the arrow of its name on it. Now match the explanations to the text features."

 

Making predictions based off the features of the text.

Getting to the main idea. 

Below is my inspiration video for this lesson.

Bringing Close Reading and Text-Based Questions into an Interactive Read Aloud of Bugs! Bugs! Bugs! (K-2) from TC Reading and Writing Project on Vimeo.

 

 

We still have 6 weeks of informational reading, so look back for more!

Jen

The inquiry process is alive in first grade!

We have started our Nonfiction Inquiry Unit and I am beside myself!  I love, love, LOVE the way the students get so pumped about reading and learning facts!!

To start out our reading unit, we used a modification of a Chart Chums chart to look into what it means to be an investigator.  We changed  Develop Theories into Research to help with our approach to inquiry.

 After picking research topics, we used our strategy of Questioning to help us guide our research.  As the class was grouped off into their own inquiries we also did a class inquiry into space to model thinking and expectations.

We then started to Determine Importance by asking, "What's important here?"  With the help of the class, we created a list of strategies that can help us find important information. Language stems have changed my students "talk" this year.  Supporting them while they are learning the language has been so important in the transfer process to when they finally own it.

Since we are researching multiple text to find out information on a topic, I knew we needed to start comparing and contrasting and doing the REALLY big work of Synthesizing.  This was our first venture....It continued today with more language stems and note taking on two text but in a more simplistic way.

To help us with Synthesizing my team created a half sheet giving the students the language stem and a rubric of their expectation.  I can't claim this idea but I sure do think it is brilliant.  My wonderful cowork RA thought and designed our very first.  It was a wonderful moment of genius for us all....give the kids their expectations in terms of what we want to see and their corresponding score...OH MY!

Here it is for you:  Synthesizing in Nonfiction

Also check out my fellow coworker's post on Synthesizing:  Ms. McTeacher: Synthesis and a *freebie*

In writing, we also started our unit with this inquiry based chart.  Our work from reading is carrying over to writing.  We are sharing our new learning from reading in an All About writing format.  

We all were in need of a refresher course on what nonfiction authors use in their own work. After searching our text we chose these examples.

It was time to make the big decision, "What in the world do you want to research?"  and the big teacher question, "Do we have enough resources on that topic?!"  My little chickies narrowed it down to 9 choices.  They fill out their top three and I quickly sorted them into 6 groups making sure that all types of learners were in each group.

In researching, I have found that kids just want to use their schema.  So we had to have a little lesson on finding information, note taking, and using all parts of a book to research.

My kids started with question and answer sheets, then used a detailed graphic organizer and finally have complied it all together into subtopics.

Tomorrow we will begin to work on which facts they want to include in their all about book, the vocabulary that is important to their topic, and which text features will support their work.

This is just little over a week into their work....so we have a bit to go!  Look back for more inquiry fun soon :)