This week, I learned about the role of questions in inquiry learning communities. Trevor MacKenzie and Rebecca Bathurst-Hunt argue that “questions are the heart of inquiry classroom and the foundation of the inquiry mindset we are nurturing in our learners.” Questions develop students’ universal need for agency, so prioritizing them is essential. From my reading of chapter 7, I also learned about an ‘essential question’. An essential question has many characteristics. To name a few, they should provoke deep thought, result in an original answer, should help students conduct problem-related research, though, they may not have an answer. The overall question must also be meaningful to the student because they are more likely to be engaged with it when they are.
I also read about different ways of honouring students’ questions. The first example is through a ‘curiosity jar’. A curiosity jar is a tool used in the classroom for students to write down their questions or wonders and put them inside the jar. Then, once the jar has some questions the teacher can use them to lead lessons. At carpet time, teachers can pull out the questions and ask the students questions about the question so that they are leading the process. I also really liked the idea of the ‘living library’. In this method, students’ questions are answered by experts based on the question. For example, a child might wonder “how many houses a mailperson delivers to every day”. The teacher then reaches out to a mailperson in the community to answer the question. Doing this shows two things: that the teacher is also on the learning journey with the student and that information can be accessed from sources other than the internet.
Overall, I learned that there are so many ways to acknowledge students’ questions in the classroom. I am really looking forward to implementing the strategies in this book in my future classroom.
All of this information is from:
MacKenzie, T., & Bathurst-Hunt, R. (2018). Inquiry mindset: Nurturing the dreams, wonders & curiosities of our youngest learners. EdTechTeam Press.