The whole point of teaching with an inquiry mindset is for students to
grapple with questions and find the answers to questions and problems,
either on their own or with the help of an adult facilitator.
We model what deep questions look and sound like.
And we practice with our students, how to ask open-ended questions
that require some digging, some reflection and some scrutiny.
In episode 27, I explored questioning and the types of questions that get our
students thinking and looking for answers.
So go and listen to that episode straight after this one, if you haven't already.
Now as inquiry educators, the one thing we don't do is jump in with the answers.
Instead we hold back and facilitate the finding of the answers.
The obvious places to look for answers are either to ask someone who might know,
an expert on the topic, for example, or we look for the answers in a book.
Or most commonplace nowadays, we Google it.
Or like one of my students once said, we just ask Siri.
No seriously.
Although, this seems obvious to us finding these answers can prove quite
tricky if you're a kid and you're still learning the skills of finding the
main idea of a text, looking for bias, deciding whether a text is opinion or
fact, finding the key words in a text.
Not to mention searching safely on the internet.
Many of these skills, especially when it comes to technology use are taught
by skilled school librarians, and ourselves who are up to date with all
the latest technology to help kids and adults find answers to questions online.
The internet can be a rather unsavory space.
So preparing students for safe searching should always be a top priority.
A good idea is to have kids safe, search engines, preloaded
onto devices for kids to use.
And these are things like safe search kids or Kiddle or kidz
search with a Zed kidz search.
And then there are websites like Britannica kids and Kid Topia, where
children can safely search topics.
There's a whole host of safe search websites for kids, but I think
it's most helpful when you have these already saved on a device.
And then train children explicitly step-by-step how to
use them to access information.
I will link these for you in the show notes.
And the reason I'm saying they should be preloaded, is because you don't want
kids, just scrolling endlessly or typing in all sorts of things in Google and then
a whole bunch of unsavory stuff comes up.
So that's what we need to protect kids from.
And so we teach kids how to search safely using kids save search engines
where they not going to be exposed to things that no kid needs to know or see.
. Finding information, not just online, but also in books and publications
is something once again, that kids need to be taught explicitly.
I have found that apart from whole class teaching and all of us going on devices
simultaneously with me demonstrating on the interactive whiteboard.
And nowadays of course, we can just mirror our device onto our whiteboards.
And then kids can follow along.
And we go through the process of using or how to use rather apps or websites safely.
And this includes typing in the appropriate key words and looking
for the correct keywords and phrases that come up in our searches to know
and understand which would be the most appropriate website to use.
So you see that we don't just set a task and expect kids
to go off and find answers.
This is not inquiry based learning and it's also a disaster waiting to happen.
Because children will start feeling overwhelmed and dysregulated
because they don't have the structure in place that makes them
feel safe and secure and capable.
Now another way that's worked for me, is to explicitly teach the
skill of looking for answers in small group guided reading sessions.
And this is when I would choose a text, which would either be printed off text
or a book or perhaps something online.
And I'd always ensure that it's a non-fiction text, and that it is
related to the topic we're covering in one of our learning areas.
So in essence, you're meeting the outcomes of multiple
curriculum areas simultaneously.
You're learning the content in a nonfiction area related to one of your
curriculum areas and simultaneously in that small guided reading group,
you're teaching them the skills of how to access information and
what to do with information.
And it's actually what you're doing is teaching them all those
comprehension skills as well.
Things like predicting, visualizing, summarizing, critical thinking, making
connections, , including using context clues, looking for the main idea and
coming up with questions about the text.
Now one powerful strategy, for practicing questioning by the way, is after reading
a sentence or a paragraph, asking children to come up with a question,
to which the answer was that paragraph or sentence, they've just read.
It's sort of a backward approach, but it really works when teaching
kids to ask questions and look for key words to find answers.
So, can you see how the skills that we use in inquiry, I actually explicitly taught
in our English or our library lessons, for example and then those skills are applied
to new learning when students are working on a science or a history or literature,
or even a personal inquiry project.
When we talk about integrated learning, or making cross-curricular connections.
Then this is what we're talking about.
Of course, we will have students with very different needs in our classrooms.
That just seems to be the norm nowadays.
And some students may need a short printed out text because all the
information that they have to sift through is too distracting.
And I would certainly say that when you're just beginning with inquiry, just use
short, printed out texts on the topic or the concept that you were teaching
and use that to teach the skills of looking for answers which essentially
is comprehension during your small group guided reading instruction sessions.
And just like the information available online
those non-fiction texts are always laid out in a certain way.
They have subheadings usually, and of course, an index or a content page.
And this is where it's once again useful, to explicitly teach the skill
that when we're looking for an answer to a question, we don't have to read
the entire encyclopedia to find the answer, but rather practise looking for
information by scouring the index, or the content page or the subheadings of pages.
All these little things that we take for granted, children actually don't
know, unless they are explicitly taught.
Finding answers to questions is a skill that needs to be taught, and
once mastered easily transferred to other areas of our lives.
And this is the wonderful thing about teaching through an inquiry
lens, because it helps not just our students, but ourselves too, to
make the connections to other areas.
And this of course is exactly what we want kids to do to
transfer learning to other areas.
I hope you can start to see that inquiry is something that is
integrated across learning areas.
And that teaching through this inquiry mindset, meets all the general
capabilities of the curriculum because you're honing those thinking, those
problem solving and investigation skills in students, which are so
essential for this ever-changing world and the jobs of the future.
Now I also just want to share with you that I've been hard at work behind the
scenes to create a better experience for you and to support you in your
planning and the smooth integration of inquiry into your lessons.
And I'd love you to DM me on Instagram or Facebook messenger,
and let me know what one thing is that you wish you had to make your life, in
your classroom or homeschool easier.
Don't be shy.
You know, we teachers need each other.
I heard a little while ago that if you want to go deep go alone, but if
you want to go far, go with someone, I think that was it, I could be confused,
but it really resonated with me in that we need to support each other.
And we need to help each other because teaching is a job that's never done.
And it's also a job where it's so much better when we work together,
when we support each other, when you have that critical friend or that
someone that can give you advice and tell you how you're doing and where
you can improve and where you are
just an absolute rock star.
And so I invite you to become part of this community of curious educators, where
we're all looking out for each other and trying to do better for our students,
by getting them to think and use that God-given gray matter between their ears.
And so if you would like more strategies and insights, just like these delivered
to your inbox, and you want to be part of this community of curious, innovative
educators, then you should really subscribe to my free weekly newsletter,
Get Curious, that's what it's called and get on my mailing list.
My subscribers get access to all the juicy bits and inside information.
So go get curious by signing up at resources.edlessons.com/getcurious.
I'll link to it in the show notes too.
And thanks for listening to blooming curious.
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So thanks so much.
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And remember, stay blooming, curious.