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