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

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?