We had a guest speaker named Trevor MacKenzie speak to the class this week about student inquiry. He spoke about the different types of student inquiries and had a great visual, which I will link below, that very clearly laid out the four types of student inquiries that you might use in a classroom. The four different types of inquiries were: structured inquiry, controlled inquiry, guided inquiry and free inquiry. We talked about how you may need to scaffold these types of inquiries in a classroom, starting with structured inquiry and slowly moving to free inquiry. If free inquiry is introduced into a classroom without a foundation of inquiry learning, some children may feel lost, confused, or overwhelmed. Many students, myself included, were never given a choice of what projects or learning outcomes that they would like to work on, they were always told what to do. If free inquiry was presented to them, they may become overwhelmed by the options and possibilities. At the beginning of the term, we were told that in this class we could do an inquiry project on anything. This concept was very daunting to me because I had never been given that kind of freedom in school before. But, now that we are further into our inquiries, I love the assignment and I’m really enjoying being able to document something that I am interested in. I love the idea of free inquiry and I’m really excited that it is being incorporated into elementary school learning. Trevor also spoke about the characteristics of an Inquiry Classroom which I thought was very interesting. Once again, he had an amazing visual, that I will link below, to represent that concept.

 

Photo by Trevor MacKenzie on @trev_mackenzie

Photo by Sylvia Duckworth on @sylviaduckworth