Hey, y'all! At the beginning of the school year, we always talk about seasons. This leads us into our studies of each individual season as the year progresses. Before we can study them in depth, we have to know what they are. 

We used our seasons STEAM unit early on in the year to explore what seasons are, but students still had some unique questions. This is where our inquiry unit comes in. Next year, I'll be pairing the two of them together from the beginning. 

We start of every inquiry unit with a question session. We use the QFT method to formulate questions which will start our research off on the right foot. We narrow down our questions to three biggies and write them on our question sheet. As we research and learn more, we add information and ask new questions. 

One of our big questions is always why we have seasons in the first place. Diagrams are included for students to take notes on and explain their thinking. I like to use videos from YouTube to help me explain this concept. It's not always the easiest idea for little learners to understand. 

At the end of our unit, we compare and contrast different seasons to show our understanding. You may choose to tell your students which two to compare and contrast, or pull seasons out of a hat, or let them choose for themselves. Any way works. 

I hope you found some new ideas for your classroom and are as excited about inquiry learning as I am. It's a fantastic way to hold students accountable for their learning and make your classroom more student-centered. 

Have a wonderful, relaxing week and I'll talk to you soon. 

Stay cozy, 

Hey, y'all. My students are loving taking charge of their learning with our inquiry and PhenomBL units. You've probably heard about inquiry learning more so than phenomenon-based learning. If you need a recap check out these posts here and here. 

One of our next big units is on fall. My students have so many questions and it's hard to get to them all. That's why these types of learning structures work so well. Students get the answers that they're looking for while also meeting our standards and learning from each other. 

We start off the unit doing a little questioning session. Students look at pictures of the topic, in this case fall, and start to formulate questions based on what they see, think, and wonder about. As a class, we narrow down our top three questions, but students can always research more!

Then, students are able to begin their research. They may delve into fall traditions around the world, fall sports that people play, animal and human activities in preparation for winter, and so much more. The beauty of phenomBL is that students can take their learning in any number of directions. 

On any given day, research time may look like students glancing over what they did the day before and refreshing their memory on what they were working on. Then, gathering as a group on the rug to make a game plan for research time. Students work individually, with partners, or with the teacher to answer specific questions. At the end of research time, students share out any Ah-ha! moments they had or anything that they found fascinating. Other students may jot down notes to look into what their friends discovered during the next research time. 

You may even wish to provide a whole class lesson or two if several students are really interested in a certain area. Most of the time though, students will be conducting research from books, online articles or videos, or hyper docs you put together specifically to answer some of their questions. 

Things like how leaves change, life cycles of apples or pumpkins, harvest celebrations, and holidays are a great place to begin your inquiry unit. I provide my students books on a broad range of topics related to fall and let students' natural curiosity guide our way. Hyper docs with links to videos or online articles are a great resource as well. 

Hey, y'all! Every year we do a ton of Thanksgiving things in November. We practice being thankful and we do all the things. Then the holidays come around the kids get the "gimmies." And all of this is largely teacher-centered.

In order to make learning stick (and last through the holidays!) we're going to be learning about gratitude with an inquiry-based model this year. (Bonus is it's free to you!)

We can show our families or our classmates we are grateful for them by using kind words and helping each other. We can show we are thankful in the cafeteria by cleaning up after ourselves, using a quiet voice, and minding our manners. Students generate ideas, I record them on a piece of chart paper, and students write the ones that speak to them on their recording sheet. 

Hey, y'all. We're gearing up for our holidays around the world unit we do every year, but this year, it's time for some updating. 

I love teaching my kids about different cultures, traditions, holidays, and more. But sometimes, it seems like I'm doing all the work and the kids just expect to be spoon-fed the answers. That's where inquiry and PBL come in.  

When students start asking the questions, they begin to actively seek their own answers. This is where the learning begins to stick and teachers become more of the facilitator and less of the provider of knowledge. 

This year, we'll be starting with an engagement activity, like a QFT session, to get students intrigued. Then, we'll be narrowing down our essential questions for the unit. Students will make a plan for their research and figure out where they want to begin. Of course, we've done several of these units already this year so students know what is expected and how to make a plan. 

Students will need things like books about holidays on or near their reading level, a hyper doc with links to videos or articles about different holidays and traditions, and perhaps this holiday unit for use with Google Classroom™. As students learn about the different holidays, they'll be organizing their findings on their note takers and graphic organizers. I like to provide my students with a list of different winter holidays or countries to begin their research.  

Once students have a strong understanding of a few holidays, countries, and traditions, we use a Venn diagram to show the similarities and unique qualities of different celebrations. For instance, we may compare and contrast Hanukkah and Kwanzaa or Christmas celebrations in different countries. There are lots of different question for students to explore in the "Getting Started" section of this unit. 

We also use a map to show where different celebrations take place. With this unit, we learn about culture, geography, map skills, reading, social studies, and so much more. 

As teachers, many of us like to do the holiday crafts and things we do every year. They can still be done with inquiry units. You will be more of a facilitator in this unit, but you can still facilitate holiday crafts! What I do is put books about the holiday in tub (plastic shoebox) along with the craft pieces and an example. Students can read, research, and complete a memento to help them remember what they learned. 

To learn more about this holiday inquiry unit, head over to my Teachers Pay Teachers store here. I'm always adding more resources so be sure to follow my store and check back often for more ideas for your classroom. 

I hope you found some new ideas for your classroom and ways to spice up your holidays around the world unit. Have a wonderful week and I'll talk to you soon. 

Stay cozy, 

Hey, y'all. There's been a huge push for inquiry based learning lately (which is really pretty similar to Phenomenon Based Learning), but where on earth do we begin?

 Right here. 

There's no point in reinventing the wheel each time you do an inquiry unit. That's why I've put together these templates. 

These inquiry notebook pages are so flexible that they can be used with pretty much any inquiry topic. 

We start off our inquiry unit with a quick QFT session and start talking about the things we wonder and what questions we have about the topic. Once students have a few key questions ready that they can begin to investigate, we begin our research. 

Now I know that there are certain standards that have to be "covered," but please know it's super easy to cover the standards even when students are creating their essential questions. If students don't outright ask the questions they need to, as the teacher you can guide them to think about certain aspects of the topic which will affect their research questions. 

We begin our research with the use of learning plans, books from the library, experiments, and hyper docs with links to specific resources. Their inquiry notebooks contain multiple graphic organizers to help students keep track of their research and ideas and help them to make connections between ideas. 

At the end of the unit, students show their understanding of the topic in different ways. Some of my students choose to write about it, some make posters, and some use apps like Flipgrid to explain their findings. Students could also create slide shows, present the findings of their experiments, create brochures, or any other number of things. 

I let my first graders choose from three different representations for the first few inquiry units so that they knew what was expected. I wasn't super particular about how they showed their understanding. I just checked off the things they said, wrote, or drew as it pertained to the concepts. If the missed something, I asked them questions until I could tell if they understood the big ideas or not. 

You can find the inquiry unit at my Teachers Pay Teachers store here. Be sure to follow me while your there so you stay up to date with the latest resources. I'm always adding new things and you don't want to miss out!

Hey y'all. I know you've heard about student-centered learning and have probably tried to incorporate more of it into your teaching practices. But how do you really turn the learning over to your students, get them engaged in their learning, and maintain some sanity in the process? Incorporate inquiry based learning strategies into your routine. 

If you're not familiar with inquiry learning, it's pretty similar to the phenomenon based learning I've talked about so much on this blog. The big idea is to get your students asking questions about the material and then working to find the answers. So how do you do that? I like to start with a little QFT. 

The question formulation technique, or QFT, is a strategy designed to get students asking authentic questions about a given topic in order to guide their learning. 

First, I show my students a zoomed in picture of what we're about to study. For instance, if we're starting a pumpkin unit, I may show a close up of a pumpkin stem or seeds. Students ask questions about the picture and either I write them down if we're doing this whole group with kinder or first grade kids, or kids write their questions with their table groups if we're working in teams (in the later half of 1st grade and up). After a few minutes, I'll show the zoomed out picture, like a whole pumpkin, and let students continue to ask questions. 

The key to the QFT is to write down any question students ask--no judgement and no answering the question and moving on. If students ask the same question twice, I just put a check mark next to it to show that more than one student said it. 

When questions are done, we determine which questions are open-ended or closed-ended. We write a "C" next to closed questions and an "O" next to the open ended questions. We then choose a closed question and rewrite it to make it an open ended question, and an open question to make it closed. 

Finally, we choose our top three questions, the ones that will help us understand the topic the most, and write them on our anchor chart and in our inquiry notebooks. 

These questions will guide our learning as we complete our unit. 

These inquiry questions work great with science stations and our PBL/Inquiry units. Instead of having students visit each science station in rotations, I had each station out and ready for students to explore as they worked through researching their inquiry questions. 

In our patterns in the sky unit, students had some great questions about how how craters formed on the moon and created their own craters in their moon play dough to test out their findings themselves. 

In our weather unit, students questions related to the patters of weather in different seasons, the water cycle, and more. 

At the end of the unit, students used Flipgrid to share out all that they learned about weather, seasons, and the water cycle. They were able to share what they learned in an authentic way rather than simply filling in worksheets or completing an assessment. This allows me to give students credit for what they do know, not just which questions they could answer. 

Science stations and PBL/Inquiry units make it easy to get started and provide resources to springboard your students' research. 

Inquiry strategies can be used with just about any topic and can easily integrate subject areas as students read and research their topic; explore science and social aspects of it; measure, graph, and analyze data about it; and so much more. 

The focus is on having students ask and do research to answer their own questions. This puts kids in the drivers seat and gets them invested in what they are learning about. When students are able to do the work to answer their own questions, they retain the information and in turn seek answers to even more questions. 

It's such a simple strategy, but does amazing things for your learners and your classroom.  

Have you tried inquiry or QFT in your classroom yet? Let me know how it went in the comments. 

I hope this gave you some more ideas on how to incorporate student-centered learning in your classroom this year. Stay tuned for more inquiry based learning ideas coming your way soon. Be sure to follow me on Teachers Pay Teachers to be the first to know when new resources come out. 

Have a wonderful week and I'll talk to you soon. 

Stay cozy,