Inquiry Based Learning

Inspiring Inquiry Through Global and Environmental Stewardship

Joshua Hill — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 18:56:56 +0000

Glenbow School has fostered a culture where global and environmental stewardship are foundational habits of mind that are embedded in everything they do. School initiatives such as a community garden, annual tree planting, upkeep of the local watershed, a natural grasslands area, and an all-inclusive recycling program not only foster responsible global citizens but also provide a spark for classroom based inquiry work which in turn accelerates the students and teachers passion to make the world a better place.

Grade Three Teachers Collaborating in Inquiry Classrooms at Prairie Waters Elementary

Barry Allen — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 00:32:08 +0000

The grade three teachers at Prairie Waters Elementary embarked on a pursuit of “inquiry” in their classrooms. In this video is a sharing of their observations where they discuss engagement, collaboration and true learning.

A Teacher’s Journey in Inquiry

Barry Allen — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 23:07:29 +0000

Denise Weaver of Prairie Waters Elementary has been on a journey exploring inquiry for a number of years. The video in this post shares the story of her passion, the changes in her classroom, teaching stye and the resulting changes in student engagement and learning.

Engaging Community, Promoting Authenticity: Banded Peak Fine Arts Day

Joshua Hill — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 22:35:26 +0000

A key element of inquiry based learning is authenticity; learning needs to be situated in the real world context in which it lives. To contextualize learning and enhance authenticity we need to go beyond the walls of our classrooms and schools and engage with the real issues, living disciplines, and experts in our communities. Schools are looking for ways to create partnerships with other organizations and develop relationships with local experts to enable teachers and students to connect to the limitless possibilities for learning that our communities hold. The video below chronicles the story of Banded Peak School’s Fine Arts Day. In partnership with the local chamber of commerce Banded Peak hosted 20 local artists and transformed their school into a art studio where students were engaged by the passion and expertise of the artists and enchanted by the wonder of photography, dance, music, illustration, acting, improvisation, floral arrangement, sculpting, pottery, painting, jewelery, and sketching. The day was an amazing success and provided the inspiration and foundational relationship for future collaboration between the students and the artists. Why not host a fine arts day at your school or a science day, an engineering day, a recreation day, a writing day, a languages day, a mathematics day… Tear the walls down, take the roof off, bring the community in and contextualize learning in the real world.

History is a Guide to Navigation in Dynamic Times

Joshua Hill — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 16:18:48 +0000

Throughout a year long inquiry, Grade 7 students worked to develop an understanding of “best practices” in cultural contact. Students explored the opportunities and challenges that were presented by cultural contact in Canadian History. The students learned that Canadian History is, in many ways, a story of cultural contact rife with successes and challenges created by the interactions of First Nations people, French, British and other European immigrants. The students also identified that in their world today they similarly face a myriad of opportunities in cultural contact in our ever flattening world. The video you are about to watch chronicles the culminating activity of this work, where students put the lessons they learned about cultural contact into practice. Students applied the lessons they learned about cultural contact and fostered a relationship with Blackfoot Elders and ultimately created documentary films chronicling their wisdom and stories.The student’s hosted a celebration of learning themed around a red carpet screening as they debuted their documentary films to an audience that included the Elders and their families, the student’s families, the school community, and the local media.

To learn more about this inquiry and to view the plan for this work please visit the Rocky View Schools Inquiry Wiki.

Robotics + 21st Century Instructional Design = Fully Engaged Learning

Joshua Hill — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 03:17:24 +0000

This post showcases a robotics inquiry project embarked upon by grade 8 students at Langdon School. The striking part about this project is the level of engagement facilitated by the instructional design. In this project students were challenged to work collaboratively to build a robot that could move a load through a “simple machine” obstacle course. Students worked collaboratively with a group of peers in their class and uniquely they also shared a robot with groups of students in other homerooms who they rarely have the opportunity to meet with face to face. The students worked as far as they could during their science block and left the robot for the next class; the challenge became how do you make sure the next group is up to speed, understands the progress that has been made and the rationale for your design decisions and can take up exactly where you left off. Students utilized web tools and several creative solutions (my favorite being an end of class state of the project video message) to ensure successful asynchronous collaborative work. The instructional design of this inquiry masterfully provided for the tenets of UDL, an extraordinary amount of formative assessment and natural opportunities for the development of 21C Competencies.

Universal Design for Learning- Students have the opportunity to learn the content in a variety of different ways (from each other face to face, from the hands on activity, from the video/text/audio left by the other groups, from internet research, from the teacher) and are provided with the choice of media to demonstrate their understanding.

Formative Assessment- Students receive feedback to inform their learning from a variety of sources: from the hands on work itself through trial and error; from the peers they meet with face to face; and from the group members who come to work on the robot when they are in another class.

21C Competencies- authentic opportunities for students to foster the skills of collaboration, communication, problem solving and innovation are paramount in this inquiry.

Does Bigfoot Exist?

Joshua Hill — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 22:59:15 +0000

Grade 2 students at Ecole Elbow Valley Elementary investigate the bigfoot phenomenon and in the process grapple with what constitutes scientific truth, explore the interconnection of fact and fiction, learn to judge the reliability of sources, and ultimately engage their curiosity and wonder about the mysteries of the world.