Top tips for inquiry based lessons

Over the last few years, especially if you work with universities or student teacher, you’ll have struggled to avoid the idea of inquiry based lessons.  Ask yourself “what do we mean by an inquiry based lesson?”  The idea behind it is that a lesson starts by posing questions, problems, or scenarios, rather than simply presenting established facts, or portraying a smooth path to knowledge.  As far as I’m concerned within my own teaching, this means less chalk & talk, and a greater emphasis on students either finding things out of working things out for themselves.

The most important aspect of any lesson that you are going to build around an inquiry question is to have the right question to work with.  When starting to plan your lesson, I think as with any other lesson that it’s important to start with your lesson outcomes and work from there.  By taking this view point you’ll keep your focus on what your students need to be able to do by the end of the lesson, rather than running the risk of going off at a tangent.  Once you start to put together your inquiry question there are a few important things that you therefore need to consider:

Does your question fulfil what your students need to achieve by the end of the lesson?

How easy is your question; will it provide enough stretch & challenge for your students?

Is what you are asking you students to do achievable?   This one sounds a bit daft but over the last few years I’ve seen students asked to work things out that have been too high level for them or unrealistic within the time-frame they have been given.

Will your question engage students?  If your question is phrased like any other question then it probably won’t, however, if it’s phrased in a way that will make them feel that they should make a discovery you’ll be onto a winner.

The other main way that I’ve found that you can approach the structure of your question, especially if you are feeling brave, is to present students with a problem and then allow them to develop their own inquiry question.  I’ve found that this method can work particularly well when getting students looking at or constructing their own equations.  In these types of lesson, I like to start with discussing some form of primary data with students, getting them to describe patterns in it and if they can see any connections.  From this initial discussion, they can then start to put together their own question about what they need to find out. 

Once you have an inquiry question in mind you can start to think about building your lesson up around it.  Remember that in this lesson you are there as the facilitator.  It’s your task to provide students with opportunities within the lesson to help them make connections and ultimately answer the inquiry question by the end of the lesson.  The big key idea at this point is that students need to be able to answer the inquiry question by the end of the lesson.   This means that you do not need to start every lesson by asking students to think about the inquiry question as implied by many universities teaching new teachers.

The big idea behind most inquiry questions has some form of literature behind it that students at least need to be aware of before being able to access the inquiry question you want them to be able to answer.  The start of the lesson is an ideal time to allow students to research this information for themselves.  This does not mean sitting students down at a computer, telling them what to look for and setting them off!  Some of the sloppiest lessons I’ve taught have been when I’ve asked students to find something out without giving them some sort of frame work or pointing them in the correct direction.  Whilst it’s important that students can carry out their own research, for what you need them to be able to answer it’s not required.  I therefore make a habit of giving students the information I want them to have work through and then carry out an activity that ensures they have.  There are a few ways that I’ve found work well to do this.

• You can give students a game with questions in it for them to work through.  You can then ask students a few of the questions they should have answered.
• Give students an exam question based on what they have read to answer, then peer assess
• Students can work in groups asking each other questions on what they have just read
• Students could discuss what they have just read and you could help facilitate this by asking open or closed questions to specific students.

Once students have an idea about where the inquiry question has come from, you can introduce the inquiry question to them instead of going through the lesson outcomes.  I feel that this is an important step as if you told students what the outcomes are it defeats them trying to work something out for themselves.  The question that I ask myself “how am I going to allow students to explore the question without giving them the answer?”  At this point I apologise to anyone reading this who is not a Science teacher as I’m going to become a little subject specific.  If students are going to work something out for themselves then the easiest way to do this is experimentally. 

When planning this part of the lesson don’t try and rush it.  Now that the course work component of the course has been removed it’s a good bet that lots of practical content will be in the final exam.  It’s therefore important to take opportunities for students to explain a practical in the way they may be asked to.  SO, for the practical you ask students to work through it’s important to think about the following:

• Ask the students to make a hypothesis that they can test using their inquiry question
• Go through with students what the variables they are going to be using
• Ask students to discuss the method they are given, or construct themselves
• Look at constructing a risk assessment for the practical they are going to carry out
• Talk through some key terms such as reliability, reproducible, repeats ect…
• And finally get students to work through the practical taking readings and then doing some results or data analysis

Once you have reached this point students will now have enough data or information to answer their inquiry question.  As with the end to most lessons this can be done I a variety of ways, however, the choice of assessment I tend to use is to allow them to work through an exam question based around the inquiry question.  Once they have answered this they can then peer assess their answer so in turn see how they have done.

I hope that these ideas are different for many others out there and they have provided some inspiration for how you can use inquiry questions within your own lessons.

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero. 

Thanks for reading

D Chalk

Difficult Physics! How to Teach Braking Energy

Why do formula 1 cars need better brakes than a normal road car?  This question was the start point to how I taught my students about braking energy and the key idea that I hung the rest of the lesson on.  In terms of teaching, breaking energy was something new to me, so gave me the opportunity to dip my toe into untested water and try out a few new ideas.  Once I realised that breaking energy is the same as work done, and that the work being done by a break must be the same as the kinetic energy of the car, the structure of the lesson evolves almost by itself.

Pre-Starter

The first thing that students must get their heads around for the rest of the lesson to make sense is what breaking energy is and some of the factors that affect the amount of breaking energy needed to stop an object.  Youtube to the rescue!  At times, I think that Youtue has made me a little lazy, but used sparingly and at the right point in a lesson, can be very powerful.  I found a range of different clips of different sized cars stopping under different conditions and start speeds ect and as a class we discussed what effects braking and how that is related to breaking energy.  This was a important activity as it ensures that everyone in the class is at the same start point so that no-one is left behind.  I’m not a great lover of how differentiation is crowbarred into lessons, however, this activity differentiates itself, and allows your higher-level students to help any lower level students.

Starter  

The first equation that students need to be able to use is how to work out kinetic energy.  Historically in my experience this is always the equation that students seem to get wrong since they type it into their calculators incorrectly.  So, how to force them to type it in correctly?  The only way that I’ve ever found to help with this is to write the process that they need to use up on the board, and then go through a few examples with them to make sure that they’re not missing steps out or trying to be overly clever with how they’re typing things in.  The way that I always explain to they to type the variables in is as follow; First work out what velocity times velocity is then press equals, times this by the mass then press equals, finally times this by 0.5 then press equals.  If students follow this methodology every time they should get the correct answer each time.

Once your student’s have gotten their heads around using the equation it’s time to give them the opportunity to have some practice at using the equation for themselves.  If you “gamify” the activity, then students will be happier to work through a series of calculation without moaning that they’ve just been given a list of equations to work out.  The activity that I use is to give students a 6 by 6 board with different variables in each square for them to use to calculate kinetic energy.  I then allow students to randomly pick questions to answer by rolling a dice twice.

The main part of the lesson

Now that students have been reminded how to calculate kinetic energy which is arguably the hard part, you can start to get students thinking about how they can work out breaking energy.  The first step I took was to connect the main part of the lesson back to the starter by quickly getting students to calculate the kinetic energy that different F1 cars have when travelling at different speeds.  This first activity will begin to let students start to build up a mental picture about what braking energy is in terms of the maths behind it.

The second activity during the main part of the lesson centres around allowing students to connect the equations for work done and kinetic energy for themselves.  By allowing students to work things out for themselves it will help them see why the equation works and why breaking force needs to be calculated how it is.  Depending on the level your class is working at will alter how much help or guidance they’ll need.  Show students the three equations they need to think about and they let them work through how to connect them together.  Once students have a single overall equation, allow them to calculate the breaking force needed by each of the cars travelling to break.

Plenary

Once students have calculated the breaking force for each velocity you can finish off the lesson with some data analysis as this will tie everything together and help stretch your higher ability students.  All my plenary activity asks students to do is quickly draw a graph of velocity the car is travelling against the breaking energy needed to stop it.  After students have a graph drawn you can ask them to describe what the results show and have a discussion which connects it back to the start of the lesson.

I hope that these ideas are different for many others out there and they have provided some inspiration for things you can do within your own lessons.

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero , and you can download this lesson from my shop at  https://www.tes.com/teaching-resources/shop/chalky1234567

Thanks for reading

D Chalk

Top Tips on Collaborative Learning

As we move into the new year I find myself thinking about the exam session which is rapidly approaching, and find myself asking “how can I change my revision strategies to get students to be more independent?”  The holy grail in teaching is to get students to teach each other allowing teachers to take a step back an act as facilitators.  One method that has been discussed lots over the last couple of years is collaborative learning.  In this blog I have tried to discuss my experiences with it and some of the ways that it can be used day to day.

Before teachers can foster positive interdependence, we must use new techniques, skills and strategies which involve:

• Planning activities and tasks in advance – including how they will be assessed
• Forming different kinds of groups for different purposes
• Using different methods to compose and recompose groups
• Having ground rules with students
• Training peers to teach peers
• Using a range of techniques (e.g. carousels/jigsaws)
• Taking time to give feedback on the process of learning as well as the product of learning, and how well students worked together

One key thing when starting to use collaborative earning within your lessons is how your classroom is set up.  Some of the main things which you may want to consider are:

• The objective of room arrangement is proximity. Zones of proximity can create good behaviour.  Can you stroll/loop around the room to be close to all students in the minimum of steps?
• Can all students see the whiteboard?
• Can you see the faces of all the students in the room?
• Can students access resources?
• How will you seat genders?
• How will you seat abilities?
• How will you seat for behaviour?
• Do you need flexibility to ‘snowball’ – individual/twos/pairs/ fours etc?
• Do you need to move between activities e.g. from a circle to individual writing?

The first stage in any collaborative learning activity is to enable students to gather the information for themselves.  If students must find things out for themselves, they will make more progress than if they are just spoon fed it.  This can be done in many ways.;

• Flipped learning:  Before the lesson you can let students know what they will be teaching and then set appropriate videos for them to watch. Students can then use this to make notes on the content they need in preparation for the next lesson.
• Directed reading:  Students can be given the content they will be producing a micro teaching presentation or short lesson on.  This method works most effectively when students must pick out key information from the text and then have it taken away before they start interacting with other groups.
• Use exam questions:  During revision, different groups of students can be given different exam questions that they need to explain to other students how to answer.
• Information hunt:  Before beginning the micro teaching activity, put key information around the room that students will need to use.  Give students some time in small groups to go around and gather the information they need to carry out the micro teaching activity.

The simplest form of collaborative learning is to let students work in pairs.  As most of the time students will already be sat in pairs it takes very little organisation other than being careful that you sit students next to each other that work well.  The way that I use this is to give students the opportunity to discuss the answer to any questions I’ve asked with their partner before they answer.  By doing this, students are able to reassure each other so when they are asked for an answer they do not feel like they are being put on the spot by themselves. 

Micro teaching involves students teaching each other ideas & content during a lesson.  There is lots of evidence that shows that students make the greatest amount of progress when they have to explain ideas & concepts to each other. Below I have outlined how to carry out a micro teaching activity with students and have tried to detail some of the possible preparation that needs to be in place to ensure that this activity has a meaningful impact on student progress.  Once students have collected the information they need, they need to put together a short lesson or presentation on a concept.  This can take the form of a traditional short presentation or a short lesson where students have prepared some simple resources to help them teach.  Once your students are ready set them up work around rows of tables as shown in the pictures below:

Explaining large concepts to each other:  This is something that I have only tried out with A level students but I don’t see any reason that it wouldn’t work across other year groups.  I give each group a large concept model that they need to start off by putting together.  Once students have put together a model like one shown below they need to be able to explain the model to other students.  As this activity is used for revision, I like to get students to video themselves explaining the model and then share their videos with each other to aid with revision.

Revision hexagons:  This is a method that I have used a few times during revision with students for the first last year and it really helped them make connections between lots of different concepts.  How I ran this task was to produce a hexagon for a number of different topics with different questions relating to that topic on each side.  Students then needed to add a hexagon with the answer to a sides question to each side.  They then needed to write their own question relating to that topic on the other sides of their hexagons.  Different students then add their own hexagons which results in a large amount of interconnected hexagons.  Once there is enough information for a topic down students can then make concept maps using the hexagons.

Constructing exam questions:  Due to a lack of multiple choice questions available for the new A Levels this is an activity that I have tried with my Biologists, however, I see no reason that it couldn’t be used elsewhere.  The way that I’ve used it is to give each student a revision topic to focus on, then write four multiple choice questions for that topic.  After they have all written their questions they swapped topics and had a go at answering each other’s questions.  Towards the back end of the lesson the student who wrote the questions highlight the correct answers and the other students can then mark their own answers to see how they have done.

Collaborative exam question answering:  This is something that I use at all stages of different lessons as it can be used for a starter, main, plenary or during revision.  The way that this task is carried out is to have a number of exam questions printed out, one per sheet of A3 paper.  Each pair of students start off with a question and are given two minutes to start answering it.  After this time the students need to pass their question to the next pair and they need to continue answering it.  After the point when all the questions have been answered, the last pair to answer the question need to mark it using a mark scheme and then feed back to the rest of the class on how well the question was answered.  

I hope that these ideas are different for many others out there and they have provided some inspiration for things you can do within your own lessons.

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero. 

Thanks for reading

D Chalk