 Inquired to me is kind of a tough thing to pinpoint, at least it was for me in the early going about, I guess about maybe about five years ago I really started thinking about what motivates students to learn and I found that in a lot of cases most students throughout their school experience have been extrinsically motivated, maybe that's by grades or because their parents told them to or because there's a set of consequences that they don't do their work or whatever the case is but when I really thought about it, the students who were kind of getting the most out of their education, most out of the curriculum, most out of what I was trying to teach were the kids who were truly curious, genuinely curious about what they were learning and I found that, yeah, I'm excited about it and that's a real, it's kind of an intrinsic thing so that, so for me when I had a moment where I could really get that, where I saw the human curiosity kind of starting to emerge, to me that was sort of the spark and to me Inquired is a whole process, it's not just that one thing but the human curiosity piece is so crucial and it's that one, it's that spark so from there I kind of feel my role is more as a facilitator so I, you have to kind of work from through that process and give them the skills and whatever abilities they need to be able to answer those questions they have so you know if it's a, every teacher's got those teachable moments where you look out in the crowd and there's a ton of kids who are all of a sudden switched on because the hands go up or whatever the case is they get really quite curious and so those are those moments where you want to, it's hard to, it's hard to force those and so you really have to work hard at trying to raise that, like I say that curiosity out of the kids. Little things like just putting the curricular objectives in kid-friendly language and sort of setting them as learning goals are really crucial because then they sort of have that umbrella of what we're kind of learning and then from there what I'll try to do is with every kind of lesson or project I try to have some little hook and some hooks always work better than others and teachers know this but if I can, if I can kind of hook them all of a sudden that kind of light bulb goes on and they're a little more curious and there's real, there's some real true, you can really see it and you can see hands go up, you can see faces light up, you can, maybe if it's written you can see questions being asked rather than then always just statements being handed in so really kind of encouraging students to ask questions and be curious but again under that umbrella of and helping them remain focused on what we're trying to learn so that's been kind of the biggest thing that's helped me lately anyways. We're studying at the grade 10 level we're studying NAFTA and so I was really worried that, I wanted to do kind of an inquiry-based research project but I was really worried that students would just simply answer what is NAFTA and just sort of a regurgitation but so where I, what I asked them is do you have an opinion and right off the bat there were no opinions because they just, they weren't front-end loaded, they didn't have any prior knowledge, they just, they didn't know so what I did was I put a series of images up both, if you look at the spectrum of strongly agree to strongly disagree with NAFTA I just kind of picked images that sort of express both ends of the spectrum and and just you know everything from, from protesters to, to suits, shaking hands like, like just you know that kind of idea and, so George Bush and Stephen Harper. Exactly, and President Fox out of Mexico so when we, when I, when I had them sort of look at those images what was really neat was there was reaction to that and so that's when I knew okay now, now kids are actually thinking about this and there's a little bit of, they're caring so when I could start seeing reactions to the images and then my setup was okay so what's causing people to feel at one end of the spectrum or another and so I gave them a few front-end questions to kind of explore but that wasn't the research project it was just to kind of explore. To explore, yeah, and that just shows too the real, the importance of front-loading to get into the inquiry. Yeah and I mean it's hard, it's tough to have an opinion, well I shouldn't say that it's easy to have an opinion without having prior knowledge but to have a really kind of a, maybe a more formed opinion that you can actually back up which is, I mean essentially what we're trying to teach, you know, that civic responsibility and that sort of thing so anyways what I found was after, after those images and after asking the question what's your opinion and then giving them some starters, started questions to kind of explore what I found was the natural inclination to start collecting information about what's good about NAFTA and what's bad about NAFTA in order to figure out where they kind of fit on the spectrum so it was kind of a neat assignment where, but it doesn't have to be images, like you say, it can be YouTube, it can be just a quote or a curious question or you just throw something up there that, a problem for example, like solve this problem, we need, we have people shipping all over the world, social studies we're talking about global economics so we were talking about how containers are now all the same size in social studies, shipping containers because they need to fit on trucks and they need to pack into, I mean instead of playing Tetris on the boats these containers have to fit, right? So I just asked the students, you know, how would you solve the problem of shipping worldwide and we sort of, we, you know, we kind of got there, got there, got there and then without even telling them one word about how these containers are now the same shape, they kind of landed on that on their own and then from there, like it's those things so and it's not, inquired to me isn't just research projects and giving them one thing they got to go find out, it's really, it's, it's opening up the doors to, and again, the way you do that is with those umbrella questions, like this is what we're studying so, it's sparking interest and then, you know, creating that desire to have their questions and answers and it's, it's tough because a lot of teachers want fence in what they're doing which isn't a bad thing because you have to but I just like a little wider fence is sort of, I like the wider fence too, when I first saw the new social studies curriculum, I look at all of those bullets and probably like every social studies teacher in the, in the province, you just, you, you see so much but what I found was, if I really work on going through the inquiry process like this cycle and not every project you're going to do the entire cycle but you know, kind of working with that, I found that a lot of those skill objectives were, and value objectives and some of those things were just kind of naturally met and it really took a lot of the, of the burden off of me and I really could just sort of, they're handing over the learning to students and it was, it wasn't like I had to check things off a list anymore, it was sort of like I said, okay, what's the spirit here, what do, what do the kids really need to know and then from there, what ended up happening was that once they started focusing in on that learning, all the, all the curriculum, curricular outcomes were just, were kind of just bled right into the project and it wasn't something I needed to say, okay, we are tackling this. Now and it made assessment way easier because I could just sort of like, I have all these curricular objectives that I know, I'm covering even though that's not really what my purpose, my intent was, I don't want to, I don't want to cover the curriculum, I want to, yeah, meeting the outcomes. Yeah, meeting the outcomes. But what I found was I could just sort of say, okay, maybe kids, let's just zero in on these two because, and so you'd build a rubric or you'd, or you'd do some sort of a self-assessment or something like that. But you, I just found it was, it just took so much of the burden off when I could just sort of naturally go through this whole process of inquiry. So it's been helpful. My number one thing is just don't be scared, like don't be worried about it because just trying it in baby steps and to me that, I've used the resource focus for inquiry a little bit that's been put out and, and when you first look at that it just seems so big and so difficult and every project needs to be nine weeks in the library and just realizing that inquiry isn't about that. Inquiry really is equipping the kids with a set of skills to be able to answer their own questions. And so if I could, if I could give teachers around the province one sort of piece of advice it is let the kids ask questions, let them, and let them find out the answers. Find ways to make sure that those, that you, like you say, with the fence, that you can fence those so that they fit underneath your umbrella so that you're meeting the curriculum but but don't limit them. So really let them be curious. And the other thing is for me one of the things that I've learned is the variety, like let them have choice in the way they present their work to you. They're learning to you because if you, if you keep them within a tight parameter you have to differentiate. And so what I've found is is when I try to cover too many curricular objectives at once and I try to assess all those curricular objectives at once my project becomes really narrow. When I try to assess maybe one or two I find that if I can just keep it to one or two then then my product, the product that the students give can be a little more open. So in terms of best practices you know they're keep going to PD, keep finding ways to make sure that students have a variety of ways to differentiate and different products they can hand in. Keep learning those best practices but for me the key is once you have sort of that, maybe that toolbox of things that that students can use and projects they can hand in and some of those skills and strategies you have from there just let the kids be curious and don't kind of always, I mean you have to reel them in but let them let them be curious. So what I've really tried to do is allow students to use technology but the technology itself, maybe it's a website, maybe it's an application, maybe it's maybe it's as simple as even a written essay or something like that. Whatever the product is the product itself isn't what they're learning. They're learning the curriculum through the product and so for me I've used some different websites like Animoto and VoiceThread and I've used different applications like PhotoStory and I mean students are used to PowerPoint but they've done MovieMaker or even using their digital camera to capture their own clips but I just believe that not everything they do needs to be a paper and pen type of an assignment and so they can just allowing students the freedom to kind of express themselves in different ways as long as like for example getting back to that NAFTA project that the the true thing I wanted them to do was to be able to support their opinion. So how they how they demonstrate their opinion could be endless and so like I say some students went on VoiceThread and they and they it's a it's a website where basically it's a slide show they can add their voice to. Some students some students chose to write the essay some students chose to do a kind of a visual essay using PhotoStory but all of all of the while the the the intent was to express their or support their own opinion and so it's really crucial that as a teacher what I've learned is it's not about the product the product is just the vehicle. So where this came out of is I went to an inquiry PD session and and one of the things they stressed was not stressed but introduced us to was this whole idea of blogging so you know I kind of listened and and and thought about it for a while and then what I found was during classroom discussions I really wanted to do some formative and summative assessments on their on their discussion of their ability to to have meaningful discussion and and what I found was there's a number of kids who they just don't they don't feel comfortable in that setting and it didn't matter if it was a a pod discussion or a class discussion or even a discussion after class kind of a one-on-one or a one-on-two kind of a discussion with the teacher they just weren't they weren't expressing themselves you know through their voice so what I found was if I asked the same questions electronically where the students were kind of I knew their username but they were hidden behind username to the rest of the class and to the people and to everybody else they what they could express to each other was really quite powerful and that was that was that particular their their ideas were silent in the classroom but then once we got into this sort of cyber world all of a sudden there was really kind of interesting conversations what I found was you know a thread in a blog kids would naturally start a discussion and and they would naturally start debating they would start arguing they would you know and and as a moderator I could kind of at least control what's out there yeah but I but to be honest with you I just allowed them to just go with it and so again those teachers who in a in a classroom conversation with only so much time on the clock and the bells just about to go they they feel like they need to again fence those kids in but with this blog I could just sort of pose we again grade 10 globalization we talked about the the World Trade Organization I just posed a question about you know kind of a controversial question about whether they were doing more harm than good with their work with developing nations and all of a sudden both ends of the spectrum people who agree people disagree started jumping in on the blog and it just took off from there so just evidence for me with my blog was in a classroom discussion I would have and teachers know this you'll have maybe 50 percent of the kids participating verbally the other there's another 25 percent who are participating but they're just sort of listening and observing and then you maybe have as many as 25 percent if it's a poor discussion who aren't even interested but then when I got onto the blog I looked and you can see how many comments so this one conversation about the WTO in a class of 30 I had over 80 comments back and forth now again not everybody's participating but if if you treat I treat the blog like an extension of classroom discussion so we start things in the classroom and then move to the blog and again there's that that whole a process of inquiry can be that simple I just posed a question there's some curiosity students actually were posting web links of information like hey look at this web link and see what you think they were citing the textbook they were citing things that were said in class it was just amazing so really for me but it wasn't the blog I'm not marking their ability to participate on the blog the blog was just an extension of the classroom and it's just a vehicle for them to express themselves so there are some things you got to do you have to sort of inform parents of what you're doing you have to you have to teach the students a little bit of of sort of security and internet safety but but really ours is I'm the moderator it's a closed blog so it's only our students in our classroom who are participating in it but but what I found was once you kind of get the feel for what a blog is that's sort of step one and so it was helpful to do some of the pd I had done in the last year on that but but again if you just it really is quite simple I had some support from other teachers in the building teacher librarian and then our tech guy but but really if you if you have some people out there who can who may be done it before or maybe once they sort of show you you really you can set up a blog in half an hour more or less you can get it set up and you can I mean for the kids to log in literally took me probably 15 minutes and they can even do it from home if if need be like it wasn't you just sort of give them the url and and you can moderate it and I moderate everything so all the all the comments kind of come through me and and I have to approve all the comments and but I tell the kids that I'm gonna let most things pass because I didn't spell check I didn't you know if they had an idea I just put it out there the only things I really moderated where whereas anything that might be might threaten like another student so one student to another like clearly I'm not going to put that on but but that to be honest with you that there was only one case of that happening and it was it was really quite an elementary thing so of the the literally talking just a humorous thing I think it was one of your students translated it into German yeah just to probably be funny I probably in the last semester I've probably approved a thousand comments and really it's just tonight it's it's just skimming over and seeing what they're saying and pressing approve and letting the kids do the talking it's not about the teacher it's about the kids so literally I'll sit down it'll take me honestly for to approve some comments after at the end of a day or at the end of a week a minute you just kind of scan through them because it's about the kids not about the teacher and you're trying to get that that discussion going but we out of the thousand comments I had I probably I think there were three that I wasn't that I didn't approve one was because one of the students put his comment that he typed it up put it into a German translator and fired it up on the website in German so which we all love those yeah so then I asked I asked the kid I said what are you doing and he goes well I just thought you would just put it back in the translator and translate it back to me I'm like why would I anyways he was just kidding around but it was actually a pretty insightful comment he just happened to be in German and so he redid it and and and then he submitted it and then the other one was some student was basically it was sort of a nothing comment like what you're saying is dumb or something like that so to me I just said you know I'm not going to put those are the kinds of things but other than that there was nothing that threatened the kids it was such a great place for kids to because they knew I was moderating right they knew I was moderating it was just a great place for them to hold the discussion and every now and then I would I would post a comment of my own but I really tried to stay out of it as much as possible and let the kids do the learning rather than me always kind of dictating what's going to be talked about what discussion you're going to have and where and where the direction of the conversation but again it started with curriculum objectives it started with sort of focused discussion on the on in this case the world trade organization and went went from there so a couple things have really I feel I've really made some improvements and that is one that really I'm explicitly making the curriculum explicitly stated it's clear to the students because everything is kind of focused I really do using backwards design backwards design yeah with the end in mind absolutely I really try to that's been the kind of the number one thing is really making sure the students know what what they're learning because if if I treated it like a checklist and we covered this and covered that at the end of the term some students if you ask them some simple questions that were more the umbrella questions they wouldn't be able to answer but when you really sort of say hey here's kind of what we're trying to tackle today here's our issue here's our question here's our focus then then what I found is they've been really um they kind of they get it and so that's kind of been the number one thing and and sort of what goes hand in hand with that is then the learning goals are kind of they're they're sort of natural so for example for right now we're studying kind of the impact of grade 10 globalization we're studying the impact of trans nationals so I put up how are they affecting people and and I just keep going back to pros and cons with the students and so we're just building a giant pros and cons list because that's what effects are they're either positive and they're negative so and the students are starting to find that the that that the effects are can jump back and forth and and so then from there when I say that the learning goals are kind of attached you know the other day I express the kids like what are we trying to do here well we're trying to just we're trying to have a deeper understanding of how trans nationals are affecting people around the world so now what's happened to my pros and cons list is now there's one for developed countries there's one for developing countries and there's less developed countries and the kids are naturally doing that and so what I've just found is that if I can explicitly state what we're trying to get at and and really stay focused on that then all of the activities and all of the projects and all of the the things that you're asking students to do they're starting to naturally fit under that whatever umbrella we're under that particular day so that's been number the number one thing and where that stem from was through the inquiry process because when I notice kids being naturally curious I needed to I needed some way to reel that in and the way I made made it make sense for me is is if the questions and the curiosity was stemming from one of our umbrellas one of our focus questions then then we could let's go for it let's tackle that right and so they can like I said the that allowed me to kind of expand my fence a little bit so it's just been again if I can if I could if I could tell teachers around the province one thing it's it's just really make sure that the kids understand simply what are we trying to do here like what are we trying to learn and from there they'll naturally they'll naturally put things underneath their own umbrella so