A Scaffold for Guided Enquiry

1. A Scaffold for Guided Enquiry

2. Enquiry model for classroom teachers K-6 in HSIE and Science. • Children pursue own field of enquiry, formulate a question to research, create a model to present their learning. • Model: glove puppet.... iMovie etc

3. Problems… children couldn’t formulate a worthy question. • Children couldn’t understand the websites they’d found. • Frustrated… reverted to a copy and paste mentality.

4. Stage 3 teachers created a mini unit on what makes a ‘worthy question’ and ‘sites of authority’. • Teacher expectations rose higher than the gains made by students.

5. Reason for the problems the children encountered: research is hard, even more so when you… • have learning difficulties • have short attention span • are not particularly fluent in English or mother tongue • are an emerging reader etc.

6. “Students often have great difficulty in the early stages of the inquiry process. Even when they begin with great enthusiasm, many soon become confused and uncertain about how to proceed. This sense of uncertainty is an indication of a need for assistance and instruction, a zone of intervention. Students need intervention tailored to each stage of the inquiry process to move to real inquiry-based learning…” C Kuhlthau et al (2007)

7. Overview of Scaffold… • Based on current HSIE or Science unit. • Relies on 3 short,structured sessionsof research to arrive at a final product. • Requires explicit teaching, and modeling by teacher. 1. Research from a ‘Primary Source Material’. 2. Research from Books 3. Research from websites

8. 1st session of researchResearch from Primary Source • Primary source is… a piece of information that every student has access to at the same time. It should be at the student’s instructional level. • PowerPoint (just a few slides) • Flip-chart (just a few slides) • Piece of text (just a few paragraphs) • Website (child friendly) • Object / Illustration [teacher creates] • Accessible, Readable, Understandable • EXPLICIT MODELING.

9. 2nd session of researchResearch from Bulk Loan Books • Teacher presents bulk loan books to students • Teaches how to use contents and index pages • Students invited to choose their area of interest using the contents page of the book so that the answer to their question is already in their hands. • Students research from the few pages or blocks of information, guided and supported by headings, illustrations, bolded / key words. (short) • Teacher models the above using an example book.

10. 3rd session of researchResearch from websites • Students use websites to find some ‘additional facts’ which support or complement what they’ve already done. • Teacher takes opportunity to teach how to ‘skim and scan’ for information, and teach about what constitutes a good website, teaches about sites of authority • Teacher… shows students how to compile a simple Bibliography. • END OF RESEARCH • Students can now present their learning in whatever way they like depending on content and audience.

11. Some specifics… • Provides a good scaffold of ‘how to’ research. It teaches students the steps. (akin to teaching chn to read) • By narrowing the focus, it allows for depth of understanding in a specific area rather than broad, vague or ill-defined attempts at research. • Each new round of research (primary source, books, websites) offers another opportunity for teachers to explicitly modelthe required steps. • By chunking the research, it’s much less overwhelming. Each new round of research (primary source, books, websites) offers another opportunity for children to practise the same skills.

12. Some specifics… • As children become more confident with the model teachers can modify it to suit the learning needs of their students. • See the last page of the ‘scaffold’ for ideas on how to enrich and deepen the thinking/learning.

13. Carol Kuhlthau (2007) • Students need intervention tailored to each stage of the inquiry process to move to real inquiry-based learning…”