The initial stage of an inquiry

In 2012, representatives from the International Baccalaureate evaluated our Primary Years Program. Among the 52 recommendations that came from that report was the following:

The staff review their planning process to ensure pre-assessment, with a variety of assessment strategies and tools, is included in order to consider students' prior knowledge so that learning can build on what students know and can do.

Before new learning can begin, students' current knowledge, skills, and conceptual understandings must be considered. However, this is not the only thing that happens in the initial stage of an inquiry. Provocations should also invite students to wonder and be curious.

At our public school, we do not often guide students through open inquiries, where they can investigate that which is intrinsically of interest to them. Therefore, it is extremely important that we work hard at the initial stage of an inquiry to get kids interested in the concepts/topics taken from the academic standards on which our units of inquiry are based.

In order to pre-assess her students knowledge, skills, and understanding and to get them interested in an inquiry under the Transdisciplinary Theme Who We Are, one third grade teacher lead her students through a Visible Thinking Routine Chalk Talk (from Making Thinking Visible by Ritchhart, Church, and Morrison).

Central idea: Community forms when people realize they have things in common.

An inquiry into:

• Maps
• Why people settle
• Family histories and the histories of others
• A student's place in the world

This teacher posed questions rooted in the Key Concepts of the PYP that fit with the lines of inquiry for this unit. Her purpose for leading her students through this silent conversation was to make their thinking visible so she could assess what her students already knew, were able to do, and understood. She also was inviting her students to think, to wonder, and to be curious about the topics they would be investigating.

As this teacher demonstrates, Chalk Talk is certainly a great assessment tool that gets students interested in the topics about to be investigated.

Below are some additional strategies, tools, and ideas that teachers can use to enter into the inquiry cycle with their students, from different researchers and educators who have created different models of the complex inquiry process.

Creators: Teachers at my school (created during a staff development day)
Initial stage called: Invitation
Teacher:

• Invites students to wonder about a topic
• Visual thinking routine: I notice, I think, I wonder
• Creates a safe environment to take risks/ask questions
• Allows a space for kids to think outside the box
• Fully engages students
• Ignites authentic interest in topics
• Creates a desire to know/understand something
• Captures the hearts, brains, and spirits of kids
• Builds background
• Starts with aspects that are interesting to students
• Identifies topics to study (if based on standards)
• Considers learners’ prior experience and current understanding
• Pre-assess students to learn what they know, understand, and can do prior to the study

Student:

• Wonder about a topic
• What is it like that?
• How does it work?
• Identify what they already know
• Are fully engaged
• Get excited
• Become curious
• Are motivated

Creators: Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels
Initial stage called: Immerse: invite curiosity, build background, find topics, and wonder
Teacher:

• Plans instruction and teaches with central curriculum concepts and focus questions in mind
• Gathers and organizes curriculum materials and resources
• Immerse kids in multiple sources to build background knowledge
• Invites curiosity, questioning, engagement
• Models own curricular inquiry
• Conducts think-alouds with text and materials related to the curricular topic
• Demonstrates how to ask questions about curricular topics
• Facilitates small-group formation to ensure heterogeneous groups with compatible interests
• Confers with small groups and individuals

Student:

• Express their own curiosity
• Explore, experience, and learn about topics using texts, visuals, Internet, artifacts, etc.
• Read, listen, and view to build background knowledge about the curricular topic.
• Talk, write, and draw in response to instruction
• Wonder and ask questions
• Meet with teams to set schedules, ground rules, and goals.

Creators: Kath Murdoch
Initial stage called: Tuning In
Teacher:

• Establishing the 'known'
• Connecting to students' lives
• Create a sense of purpose for inquiry
• Invite first thinking
• First invitation for questions
• Ask:
• What theories do we have?
• How do you already understand this?
• What connections can you already make?
• How could we find out more about this?

Creators: The 5E Instructional Cycle
Initial stage called:Engage
Teacher:

• poses problems
• asks questions
• reveals discrepancies
• causes disequilibrium or doubt
• assess prior knowledge

Student:

• calls up prior knowledge
• has an interest
• experiences doubt or disequilibrium
• has a question(s)
• identifies problems to solve, decisions to be made, conflicts to be resolved
• writes questions, problems, etc.
• develops a need to know
• self reflects and evaluates

Writing conceptual statements with 3rd graders

Among the 22 social studies benchmarks that third graders need to learn, third grade teachers meet the following three benchmarks by guiding their students through an inquiry into why ancient civilizations settled where they did. For this lesson, the teacher follows the simple inquiry cycle Invitation-Investigation-Demonstration.

• Economics Benchmark 3.2.4.5.1: Explain that producing any good or service requires resources; describe the resources needed to produce a specific good or service; explain why it is not possible to produce an unlimited amount of a good or service.

• Geography Benchmark 3.3.1.1.2: Create and interpret simple maps of places around the world, local to global; incorporate the "TODALS" map basics, as well as points, lines and colored areas to display spatial information.

• History Benchmark 3.4.3.7.1: Explain how the environment influenced the settlement of ancient peoples in three different regions of the world. (Early Civilizations and the Emergence of Pastoral Peoples: 8000 BCE—2000 BCE)

Invitation

To invite students to inquire into why ancient civilizations settled where they did, the teacher shows a world map, asking students what they see on the map. The discussion centers on the fact that this is a world map and that the ancient civilizations are concentrated in a particular place on the map (Europe-Africa-Asia).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/World_1_CE.PNG

Investigation

Then, the teacher shows the students a map that "zooms" in on this concentrated area. This "new" map shows something different. The teacher states that this map will give us information that we need to answer the question, "why did ancient civilizations settle where they did?"

http://www.rcet.org/twd/images/river_civilizations.jpg

Next, the students divide a piece of lined paper into thirds, horizontally. Students label the thirds with the words "See", "Think", and "Wonder". See-Think-Wonder is a Visible Thinking Routine from the book Making Thinking Visible by Ritchhart, Morrison, and Church.

After students write down what they see on the map, they share with someone near them. Next, the students share out with the whole group and the teacher scribes the students' thinking, sorting as students share.

After, students label the categories.

Then, students are given a couple of quiet moments to write down what they are thinking about what the map is telling them, especially regarding where civilizations settled. Like before, they share with a small group before sharing in front of everyone. The teacher again scribes their thinking.

Demonstration

To demonstrate their conceptual understanding, the students are instructed to write down one sentence that sums up all the learning that they did about where ancient civilizations settled. Once everyone has had a chance to synthesize their own thinking, everyone shares their thinking, starting with a simple statement and then revising it until the statement is timeless, abstract (to a degree), universal, and transferrable. In the example below, the quotations between the drafts are the teacher's prompts. The changes on the drafts reflect the suggestion from the 3rd grade students.

"Why did ancient civilizations settle where they did?"

"What else to we want to include? What is missing?"

"What do we mean by 'everything they needed'?"

"I'm a little confused who is doing all of this and what they're doing. Our subject needs a subject and a verb."

"Was it just Egyptians that did this?"

"I'm going to read a page from the text Understanding Civilizations by Stefan Stevens. In the book, the author wrote a page that explains why ancient civilizations settled where they did. Let's check to see if we're missing anything."

http://cdn2.lybrary.com/understanding_civilizations_by_stefan_stevens_1477726225.jpg

"You know a band of the Dakotah-Sioux Indians settled on the banks of the Mississippi River near our school for a lot of these same reasons, but they only settled there several hundreds years ago. Also, the South St. Paul stockyards were started here in 1886 because of the river. How can we change our statement to include these more recent events?"

After reading about how third grade teachers have written a conceptual statement with their students, how have you or could you write generalizations with your students?

Generate-Sort-Connect-Elaborate

They're at it again!

I have now twice (April 25, 2014 and March 28, 2014) written about teachers in my school using the Visible Thinking Routine Generate-Sort-Connect-Elaborate (Making Thinking Visible by Ritchhart, Church, and Morrison) as a way to help students uncover and organize prior knowledge to identify connections.

In first grade, teachers used this Thinking Routine to help invite their students into the unit of inquiry Sharing the Planet. Students will investigate the changes that animals experience throughout their life cycle. Part of the invitation step in the inquiry process is to pre-assess what students already know, understand, and can do prior to the study to help plan and guide further learning.

Teachers began the thinking routine letting their students know that they were interested in seeing and hearing the students' thinking about livings things.

Students then generated a "collection" of living things, writing and drawing on slips of paper.

Together, students sorted the living things into categories that they created. Students were asked to explain their thinking throughout the sorting process. After the categories were established, the class labeled their categories.

Next, students made connections between the groups, again being asked to explain what they were thinking. Finally, students elaborated on their groups, by adding other living things to the categories they had previously established.

It should be noted that during this process, as students made their thinking visible through their explanations, many interesting ideas and misconceptions were brought to light.

Is a rock a living thing?
How about water?
What about love?
How about blood?
What makes a living thing living?
Should a shark go in the same category as a whale and a dolphin?
Is a dinosaur living, if there aren't any living now?
Should we sort animals by what they eat or by where they live? Or perhaps by how they act?

As students explained their thinking, teachers made mental (or in some cases written) notes on what their students were saying. These notes will help teachers plan future learning engagements.

Below are the products of the Thinking Routine Generate-Sort-Connect-Elaborate from different first grade classrooms. Note that each one is different, because it was constructed by the particular students in each of the different classrooms.

This is the same Generate-Sort-Connect-Elaborate as above, just a couple of days later. The pink panda paper in the upper right corner of the picture is research that a student completed at home on her own without any teacher direction. Also, note the difference between the two pictures, especially the number of connections students made between the groups.

Note how the students basically crafted the central idea of the unit of inquiry in the middle of their sort.

"Love" made it through the first round of the sort, as did water. In this version, those items were taken off.

  

After reading about how first grader teachers used the Thinking Routine Generate-Sort-Connect-Elaborate to invite their students into the unit of inquiry about changes and cycles, how could you or have you used this Thinking Routine with your students?

The 4C's

The 4C's is a Visible Thinking Routine used to synthesize and organize ideas. It comes from the book Making Thinking Visible by Ritchhart, Church, and Morrison (p. 140). According to the authors, the 4C's is used to make connections, identify key concepts, raise questions, and consider implications. It is a text-based routine that helps identify key points of complex text for discussion that demands a rich text or book.

What are the 4C's?*

Connections: What connections can you draw between the text and your own life and/or other learning?

Challenge: What ideas, positions, or assumptions do you want to challenge or argue in the text?

Concepts: What key concepts or ideas do you think are important and worth holding on to from the text?

Changes: What changes in attitudes, thinking, or action are suggested by the text, either for you or others?

*Click here for a more detailed description of the this Visible Thinking Routine.

In fifth grade, a teacher was looking for a learning engagement that would allow her students to get into issues related to human and natural changes to the environment. She was noticing that there was a lot of news that connects with this topic every day.

Specifically, the teacher decided she wanted to focus on water scarcity. In her class, the students were investigating how human development affects the water supply and water quality because there are so many obvious global connections to make. After doing some quick searching, the classroom teacher quickly learned that there was a lot of content out there on water scarcity. The trick was finding the right resource that contained enough information but was still fifth grade appropriate.

After finding some sources that fit the "rich text" description that this Visible Thinking Routine demands, the teacher identified a conceptual understanding she wanted her students to develop during the learning engagement: Students will understand that the availability of water affects human interactions with the environment.

In planning the learning engagement, the teacher used the inquiry cycle developed by our staff recently during a professional development day.

The staff in our building used the Visible Thinking Routine "I used to think .... Now I think" to show their understanding of inquiry. Their responses were then synthesized together and fit under three major parts of inquiry: invitation, investigation, and demonstration.

Invitation: During the invitation stage of an inquiry, the teacher is responsible for igniting an authentic interest in the students and capturing their hearts, brains, and spirits. 

In order to do this, the teacher had the water fountain turned off after gym class so the students didn't have access to water, especially when they needed it the most. She gave the students a Dixie cup that they could use to walk upstairs to the office to get some water.

Investigation: During the investigation stage of an inquiry, students need to discover information from a variety of sources, construct knowledge and understanding by digging deep into the material, and make their thinking visible.

To investigate the topic of water scarcity, the students watched a video about Gladys and how The Water Project helped her village get access to clean, fresh water.

Students then were introduced to the 4C's activity and were given the article Food for the Hungry Establishes Clean Water Systems for 200,000 People Worldwide. Students individually read the article and were instructed to write down any connections, challenges, concepts, and changes they thought of while they read (a copy of their recording sheet can be found below).

Demonstration: During the demonstration step in the inquiry process, students are given the opportunity to reflect on their learning, while they generate additional thoughts and questions.

To demonstrate their thinking and learning, fifth graders came together and shared their connections, challenges, concepts, and changes in a discussion. Students continued to add to their recording sheets as they heard the ideas of others.

An example recording sheet of the 4C's.

The teacher continually asked students to back up their responses with evidence. As students would share their statements, assertions, or opinions, the teacher often would ask, "“what makes you say that?” or “tell me more about that", which is the Visible Thinking Routine, "What makes you say that?" also from Ritchhart, Church, and Morrison's book Making Thinking Visible (p. 165).

After reading about how 5th graders used the Visible Thinking Routine of 4C's to identify key points of complex text for discussion, how could you or have you used this Visible Thinking Routine to make your students thinking about key points in complex texts visible?

Chalk Talk

At the beginning of a unit of inquiry, a teacher has the important responsibility of creating a desire within her students to know about and understand a particular concept. During this initial “invitation” phase of the inquiry, teachers need to set up learning engagements where students can feel safe enough to take risks, ask questions, explore, be engaged, share their background knowledge, and to think outside the box. Yes, this initial step is a pre-assessment; it is essential that the teacher knows what the students know, understand, and are able to do as they dive into the unit of inquiry. However, this first step is more than just figuring out what students already know about a particular concept and collecting student questions. It is about capturing the hearts, brains, and spirits of the kids and igniting authentic interest in the concepts & topics being studied. (It is important to note that these ideas about this first step in the inquiry cycle are not my own. They all came from our school’s staff, when we completed the Visual Thinking Routine, “I used to think … Now I think” about the inquiry process at a recent professional development. I simply aggregated their responses to create our unique inquiry cycle: Invitation-Investigation-Demonstration.)

Because this first step in the inquiry process is so influential to the success of the study, the learning engagement that the teacher decides to complete with her students must be a significant and engaging one. Ritchhart, Church, and Morrison have included seven Visual Thinking Routines for introducing and exploring ideas in their 2011 book, Making Thinking Visible. Chalk Talk is one of those routines that teachers can use to “uncover prior knowledge, ideas, and questioning.” The routine is an “open discussion on paper; it ensures that all voices are heard and it gives students thinking time," (p. 51).

Recently, a second-grade teacher was preparing to begin a unit of inquiry with a central idea of: people influence the world in positive ways. During this unit of inquiry, students inquire into the characteristics of a hero, people who have made a difference, one’s own personal strengths, and how people can make a difference in the world. To spark her students’ interest in these particular concepts, she wrote several prompts on large sheets of chart paper and placed them on tables around the room. Her students had markers and she invited them to silently move freely from poster to poster, recording their responses to the prompts. Below are the "finished" products:

With these posters, the teacher not only excited her students about the idea of studying heroes who have made a difference both in the past and in the present, but she was able to efficiently collect valuable information about what the students already know, understand, and are able to do. She can now use this information to tailor future lessons to meet the specific needs of her students.

For instance, during a subsequent lesson, the teacher helped the students aggregate the information they wrote down from the "what is a hero" poster to create a working definition of a "hero".

Now, as students learn about heroes through reading, writing, and viewing a variety of multiple sources throughout the unit of inquiry, they can "test" their definition of what a hero is and continue to adapt it.

Building on the success she had with the original chalk talk routine, the teacher wanted to use the same Visible Thinking Routine, but in a different way. She knew the students already were familiar with the process, so they were ready to apply that familiar process to new content. 

As a way to continue to inquire into heroes, the teacher introduced the students to the poem "Lincoln", by Nancy Byrd Turner. Knowing that the poem was beyond the independent reading level of second graders, her plan to scaffold the activity was to copy each stanza of the poem onto a separate piece of chart paper. She even made the point to the second graders that she divided the poem into fourths (math connection). She then had the students read the poem, stanza by stanza, noting their ideas about what they thought the author was trying to communicate with each stanza.

Since learning about how this particular second grade teacher used the Visible Thinking Routine "Chalk Talk" in her classroom, other members of the team showed me how they have used it in the past with their students. Here are some examples of how other second grade classrooms used this Visible Thinking Routine as they studied communities last fall:

After reading about how members of the second grade team are using the Visible Thinking Routine "Chalk Talk" to introduce and explore new topics and concepts with their students, how could you use "Chalk Talk, in your instructional practice?