Inquiry+Skills

toc =Locating Information=

Key Words
Key words are really important but hard for students to understand. These digital resources may help:

[|digital fluency]

quintura [|visual thesaurus]

Key words are words that are specific and important to the broad topic area of your inquiry and search terms that yield rich information in text and online resources. They make up the 'language' of the inquiry topic. Encourage your students to collect words/terms that yield rich information and share these with each other, construct a class glossary that defines key words, make a note of terms that yield useful websites. Key words might also be words that the students are unfamiliar with especially if the inquiry topic area is new to the children. Encourage your students to be on the look out for unfamiliar words and to look these up in the dictionary adn thesaurus. Encourage your students to use the contents and index pages of books as well as noting key words they find in chapter and section headings.

Building an understanding of the key words in any inquiry is an inquiry of itself - it will be a work in progress and may take time. As your students dig deeper within the inquiry they will become more familiar with and able to identify relevant key words/terms.

Questioning
I've been doing a bit of searching - looking for online links, sites and articles that might help us with our cluster inquiry into questioning within inquiry.

There seem to be as many typologies of questioning as there are stars in the sky but i am going to include links i have found useful in my search and you can make of them what you will. Use them if they are useful, discard them if they are not and let them inform your thinking if that's what's needed.

I like Trevor Bond's Extended Questioning Framework - he draws a contrast between formative and summative questions. Trevor's Questioning section on his wiki is really valuable reading - he explores the difference between students acquiring knowledge of different question types and developing their abilities as questioners. Essential reading for us as each cluster school is taking their investigation of questioning within inquiry to a deeper level in 2009.

Have a look at [|Cody's Science Education website] - he is focused on the role of student questioning in inquiry. what i learnt from him i got from his master's thesis (follow the link on his site if you're interested). He talks about the teacher's role:
 * categorise student questions into those that are investigatable and those that are not
 * work with students to turn their questions into investigations - this will bolster their belief in their ability to inquire successfully
 * distinguish between questions that can be answered within science and those that can't
 * break 'large' questions into smaller questions AND work with students to design procedures for investigation

I found a quote on his site i liked: "Children's ideas are windows on their existing knowledge, and are thus foundational to a constructivist teacher." (Cody Anthony)

Asking children to represent their ideas orally, in writing, drawing, modelling etc at the beginning of an inquiry and throughout gives the teacher insight into their understanding of the concepts within the field of a particular inquiry - we really need to build in as much time as possible for this.

Other useful links: [|Jamie McKenzie Questioning Toolkit] [|questions related to Bloom's Taxonomy]

Steps Model
I have included this slideshow in here because in addition to presenting the STEPS inquiry model it includes resources and tools to teach the skills needed at each stage of the inquiry process - see what you think.

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