In this article, I will demonstrate how we can use guided inquiry in a science lesson.With Cognitive-Powered Instruction, lessons center on a culminating activity. In another article, I described how to create a culminating activity for a standards-based lesson that (1) targets a distinct Depth of Knowledge level and (2) incorporates cross-disciplinary topics.
Depth of Knowledge
The choice of Depth of Knowledge for the culminating activity because most student-centered approaches, such as guided inquiry, promote higher DOK instruction.If we decide teach a science lesson at DOK-4, we might need help in crafting a culminating activity to guide our lesson. Fortunately, some online resources match Depth of Knowledge to science.
- Norman Webb, Depth of Knowledge in Four Content Areas
- Karin Hess, Applying Webb's Depth-of-Knowledge (DOK) Levels for Science
- Karin Hess, Exploring Cognitive Demand in Instruction and Assessment
One way we can accomplish this goal is to create a scenario in which two worlds collide, where both sides of an issue disagree on experimental results. To ensure that students simply do not take a side and cast their eyes only on resources and results that agree with their own world view, we can force their objectivity by having them write a point/counterpoint script.
I won't reproduce the process here, but will simply propose the following cross-disciplinary culminating activity for a middle school ecology lesson:
A textile factory wants to open in your community and promises to hire hundreds of workers. Immediately, community residents take sides in a debate over air quality versus economic prosperity. As a writer for a local news channel, you will create a point/counterpoint script that addresses the factors associated with this debate.*
Advanced Inquiry Processes
In a recent blog article, I discussed the relationship between guided inquiry, a student-centered learning approach highly favored in the sciences, and Depth of Knowledge, the four-tiered chart of cognitive complexity formulated by Norman Webb. Not only can these levels help create rigorous culminating activities for lessons, they also provide a rough means of ensuring that a culminating activity is sufficiently rigorous.At Wenning's highest level, which I loosely correlated to DOK-4, we have (2004)
- solving complex real-world problems,
- synthesizing complex hypothetical explanations,
- establishing empirical laws on the basis of evidence and logic,
- analyzing and evaluating scientific arguments,
- constructing logical proofs,
- generating predictions through the process of deduction, and
- hypothetical inquiry
Knowledge Dimension of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy
As discussed in another blog article, the Knowledge Dimension of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy provides a good starting point for detailing the essential elements of the lesson. We also added relevance knowledge, deep knowledge, and communicative knowledge to the mix, producing seven domains in total:- Factual knowledge: Definition of climate, how climate differs from weather, greenhouse emissions
- Conceptual knowledge: How human activity affects greenhouse emissions; how economic prosperity affects climate change; greenhouse effect
- Procedural knowledge: How to research climate change; how to analyze two sides of a debate
- Metacognitive knowledge: Understanding the challenge in analyzing opposing arguments; understanding what they know and do not know about climate change; understanding how to learn more about climate change
- Relevance knowledge: Analyzing both sides of a debate is a necessary career skill; science knowledge is not just important to scientists
- Deep knowledge: Identifying the main element of both sides of the debate; understanding how political, economic, and social conditions impact ecological debates
For students to learn how human activity and economic prosperity affects climate change (also analyze-level Bloom's Taxonomy), we can turn to guided inquiry.
Guided inquiry charts
As a reminder, we are using guided inquiry to teach students one of the key aspects of the lesson: How human activity and economic prosperity affects climate change.Numerous authors have created charts to help guide students through the inquiry process, although much of this development occurred in the field of literacy education. As early examples, I-Search papers resembled KWL charts but with four categories: (1) what I knew before I started searching, (2) the process, (3) what I found, and (4) what I still want to know (Macrorie, 1988).
I-Charts (Hoffman, 1992) followed soon thereafter and comprised three major phases: Planning, Interacting, and Integrating and Evaluation. To complete I-Charts, students, under the guidance of their instructor) (Assaf, Ash, and Saunders, 2011)
- identify a topic of interest with relevant questions,
- collect a variety of sources they can use to critically evaluate the information and synthesize results
- explore their prior knowledge about a topic
- read and record interesting information connected to their question,
- view the teacher modeling how to record relevant information on the chart and pose new questions, and
- generates summary statements to move beyond the literal and to synthesize and evaluate information.
Bruner Inquiry Process Chart
Personally, I favor the following chart developed by Cornelia Brunner (2012), for which I modified by inserting the middle (purple) column to make the chart more amenable for science lessons. Each column corresponds to a phase associated with the inquiry process. For a detailed discussion of this chart, along with some nice handouts for student use, see the YouthLearn blog post.
Column 1
The first column could also be labeled metacognition, where students examine their current knowledge about a topic and their confidence in what they know.A student might write down "The Earth is heating up" and "I have heard it on the news" for the second and third boxes down the column.
For the next box (What do I need to know?) a student could answer, "I need to know if the pollution we create actually raises global temperatures" and "Do prosperous areas produce more or less greenhouse gases and why?"
Column 2
The second column is more straightforward. For example, the first box compels students to brainstorm where they might be able to hunt down information. "Are there any online forums where I can ask? Would any of my other teachers happen to know? Are there any organizations that have members who are experts in this field?"The third and fourth boxes down compel the student to evaluate the source of his or her knowledge: "I have been told that by some of my friends and I have heard it on the news. They used this fact in a movie I saw a week ago. But those sources could be wrong. One quote is from a book, but books are not necessarily good sources. However, this other quote is from an actual refereed journal."
The fourth box down (Who is responsible for the info?) is often treated too lightly by students. The source of the information is worthy of serious consideration. Is the source credible? Is the source biased? These skills need to be taught earlier in the semester.
Column 3
The nature of this lesson is not conducive to student experimentation. Therefore, for this lesson we will skip this column.However, science lessons often feature systems that allow students to explore and experiment. For example, students investigating road design may want to simulate the system on a computer. Students investigating whether tarantulas can grow to the size of cats can build life-size scale replicas to see if the spider's legs can handle the increased mass.
In the bottom box, students analyze what they find to see if they can glean any insight for their project. For example, the issue of scale can create problems whenever small-scale systems are developed to test theories, since physical systems at smaller scales can behave much differently than the real thing.
Good examples of exploration and exploration appear on the television show Myth Busters, where the design team build small-scale mockups of real-world problems to garner information about the feasibility of a purported myth.
Column 4
In the third column, students analyze what they found and generate new questions for further inquiry.The boxes titled "What parts support my answer" and "What parts do not support my answer" need modification for our lesson, since students are not generating a hypothesis but rather analyzing what is known from both sides of a debate. As such, for this example I would suggest changing the titles to "What parts support one side of the debate" and "What parts support the other side of the debate?" (Educators have overemphasized the role hypothesis plays in the scientific process, in my opinion.)
Column 5
The fourth column adheres fairly close to acceptable standards of communication, including casting results with a defined target population in mind and selecting an appropriate medium for delivering the results.Evidence of instruction
Guided inquiry focuses on processes, not outcomes. We want to avoid assessing student proficiency simply on the quality of their finished products, such as the PowerPoint they create to broadcast their results to the class. Therefore, evidence of instruction plays a critical role in inquiry learning.As students work their way through the boxes, they should log their questions and answers. Not only does this behavior mimic the behavior of real professionals, it is also a means of creating artifacts of their learning, which they can use later to refresh their concepts and skills. Such artifacts also help teachers monitor progress and gauge proficiency.
For example, when researching the credibility of sources (Column 2), students should log their results and how they found them. After reviewing student work, an instructor should not have to ask students how they determined the credibility of their sources. And students shouldn't have to try to remember how they came to decide that their sources were credible.
Teachers should also monitor student logs throughout the activity and write informative feedback directly on the logs throughout the lesson, providing students with concrete, lasting guidance not only for the time in which they engage in the lesson, but thereafter as well.
If instructors think guided inquiry is a great way to catch a breather while students do all the work, they can think again. The continual monitoring of student logs alone will keep instructors hopping throughout the lesson. As such, instructors are typically busier during guided inquiry lessons than most other teaching forms.
* Requiring students to write point/counterpoint scripts is a good way to compel them to consider opposing arguments. Time permitting, students could act out a simulation of a point/counterpoint video for an educational tv show. However, such an activity could shift the focus too far away from climatology/ecology.
Hoffman, J. V. (1992). Critical reading/thinking across the curriculum: Using I-charts to support learning. Language Arts, 69, 121–127.
Macrorie, K. (1988). The I-Search paper (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.
Brunner, C. (2012). Inquiry-Process Model. Cited in YouthLearn (2012). How to: Inquiry.
Assaf, Ash, & Saunders. (2011). Renewing two seminal literacy practices: I-Charts and I-Search Papers.
Wenning, C. (2004). Levels of inquiry: Hierarchies of pedagogical practices and inquiry processes.
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Seeking training at your school or district centered on Cognitive Rigor or Depth of Knowledge? Call me at (559) 903-4014 or email me at jwalkup@standardsco.com. We will discuss ways in which I can help your teachers boost student engagement and deep thinking in their classrooms. I offer workshops, follow-up classroom observation/coaching, and curriculum analysis to anywhere in the country (and even internationally).
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