Inquiry for the whole class

Last term I experimented with using inquiry to engage students in their learning. In one of my reading classes I asked students to bring in a list of 10 questions about things that made them curious. We brainstormed a few examples when I gave the assignment.

I asked students to write their questions on the board when they returned and we looked at them together. We brainstormed more questions, and then I asked the students to narrow their choices. I gave each a marker and asked them to put five dots by their first choice inquiry question, four dots for their second choice, etc., down to one dot for their last choice. After they did this we counted up the total dots and the most popular choice was "Why are books banned?"

I then did some web research about book banning, starting from the American Library Association website. The first day we read some introductory material from the ALA about banning vs. challenges and which books have been challenged. On the second day we read charts that described the reasons why books are banned.

Thus I learned, the hard way, not to use an inquiry question that has a discoverable factual answer! On Day 2 we found out why books are challenged: parents challenge books with sexual content. When I came to class the next day, and tried to interest students in tackling the most challenging reading in the packet, a speech by Justice Douglas about the dangers of censorship and McCarthyism's threat to democratic freedom, it was as if all of the energy in the room had been sucked out. After class I realized there was no reason to continue on, because the inquiry had been answered. We knew why books were banned.

The better inquiry question would have been: Should books be banned?

Not to let the wonderful topic and materials go to waste I pressed on with the planned unit, although I doubt I'd try that again! Jennifer Ferro, one of our wonderful faculty librarians gave me a list of books in our college library that patrons might find offensive, including one book that patrons had challenged. I showed the books to the students and had each student choose a book to write a challenge for, using the library's policy and the library's actual forms, which were all available on the college website. Then we held a simulated library committee meeting, with our librarian chairing, where each student presented a book challenge and the committee discussed it.

After this piece I showed students a series of short bits of documentary video about McCarthy and McCarthyism, so that we could return at the end to tackle Justice Douglas' opinion on censorship and freedom.

For next time:

• Make sure the inquiry question is open-ended
• Invite questions that go deeper than yes/no answers
• Strike out questions that someone in the group knows the answer to
• Try sparking curiosity and focusing an inquiry on a particular topic by bringing in a visual and having students create questions about the image, working from there into the topic

For example, in the original list of possible inquiry questions there were questions with a yes/no answer and questions like these:

• "Why do people make art?" (So philosophical and so far from my own knowledge base that I was fearful of my ability to pull together an effective set of readings in the time we had.)
• "Why won't the FDA approve vitamins as treatment for cancer when it's proven that vitamins are effective?" (Interesting, but I was fairly sure the person who asked it thought they knew the answer, and so it wasn't a curiosity so much as an argument.)

Interestingly enough, just after the choosing activity where students voted for "Why are books banned?"I heard students actively discussing what they knew and wondered about near death experiences. We agreed to explore near death experiences after book banning.

For this second inquiry, I used this question: "What do human beings experience when they are near death?" This was not a topic I would have ever thought about, but the students shared an interest in it and I found the reading and the discussions fascinating. We read and compared the experiences of different people, mainly doctors, to Moody's famous list of the elements of near death experience. We read excerpts from Jill Bolte Taylor's Stroke of Insight (and her related TED talk) and from another doctor's account called Proof of Heaven.

Refining think alouds

I've been experimenting with meta-cognitive reading think-alouds and their written cousins, the technique called "talk to the text.' Some lessons learned:

• before demonstrating, ask students to notice what you do and warn them you'll be asking them to describe what they observed as soon as you finish
• write down notes on the text as you go so they can also see your thoughts as they hear them
• make a copy of the text with wider margins and more generous line spacing for notes
• keep demo to two minutes - avoid overwhelm - TMI
• keep the debrief short - 2-3 minutes is plenty - resist the urge to talk, reframe, add
• go from teacher demo to reciprocal format, where teacher reads aloud and students talk aloud, building a think aloud as a whole group, with teacher writing student thoughts down on the text for all to see
• when students are solid as a whole class with teacher writing, then try pairs
• have pairs alternate
• can have one pair reading and thinking aloud and the other marking the text
• instruct the pairs that while one is reading and thinking aloud, the other one's job is to listen supportively, not to instruct, correct, etc.
• follow with an assessment to show students how much they comprehend after putting in effort 

Here is a short video with a demonstration that also explains the steps in this kind of lesson.