OER4Schools/Starting the enquiry based learning process: Difference between revisions

{{activity|Individual reading task}} The essence of EBL is asking good investigative questions and that the students participate in the planning, researching and presentation of responding to these questions through projects and activities. It may be the case that the field trip activity you have thought about earlier can be a catalyst event for helping students to think about good enquiry questions!

{{activity|Whole group discussion}} To refresh your memory of what EBL can look like, let's review one of the clips of one of the teachers using EBL that you watched last week. As you watch the clip, try to identify these four parts of EBL in his lesson.

{{activity|Small group discussion}} Get into your previous group of 3-4 teachers again (as in last week’s ‘Planning an outdoor’ activity). Look through the questions in the diagram above in each of the four parts of the enquiry process. Think about how useful they are for the field trip you are planning to organise.  

{{activity|Individual reading task}} In this section, we introduce the idea that it is important students know what a good enquiry question is and are willing to pose them! We suggest that it is very important for the teachers in the first stage of an enquiry-based lesson to help students to pose '''real questions and productive questions'''.  

{{activity|Whole Group Game}} This game is about learning to ask open and real questions. The idea is that you go round your group, and practice questioning.  

{{activity|reflection}} '''Bigger and smaller questions.''' You will realise that some of the questions are ‘bigger’ than the rest in terms of the possibilities that the question can be ‘broken down’ into ‘smaller’ ones. It is probably easier to respond to the ‘smaller’ sub-questions than the ‘bigger ones’. Therefore, responding to the smaller questions will give clues to answering the bigger questions. Bigger questions might frame a whole enquiry whereas smaller, sub-questions might collectively structure that enquiry.

{{activity|Whole group discussion}}  Watch the following clip on Abel trying to get students to understand the relationship of area and perimeter. Pay attention to the questions he posed. What other questions could be asked to elicit the students ideas on the concept of area? How might a 'think pair share' approach to the class discussion have affected student’s learning? Consider the question, ‘How do/can we measure area?’.  How might this question be developed into a useful enquiry activity for students?

{{activity| Group discussion}} Read the following examples of teachers trying to start an enquiry-based learning lesson for a maths topic on angles of polygons. According to Douglas Llewellyn, the different approaches of enquiry-based teaching require teachers and students to play different roles in the enquiry-based learning process.