Written by 
My research question is:
How Might We… use a variety of methods – both low and high tech to capture and assess student thinking throughout the inquiry process?
I had a fairly clear idea of what I wanted to investigate coming into C21, so I targeted 2 assignments I wanted to develop last term. Here are the experiments I did with my Grade 7 Geography and Grade 10 Careers classes, and some observations:
Planned Experiments (what will you try and do to test your idea)
Grade 7 – Comparing Earthquake Case Studies Inquiry
- Amend student inquiry doc to allow for student guided inquiry questions, individual student choice of case study, mid-point evaluation prompt questions to encourage deeper critical thinking throughout the inquiry process
- Schedule individual student check in conversation assessments to help assess and redirect students as appropriate
I was really happy with how much deeper students went into their inquiry on this assignment. The modifications I made to an existing assessment made the end products much more insightful (and interesting to mark!)
The Wonder Wall activity students did at the beginning of the inquiry process hooked them in and provided a visual focus each lesson to return to as a class.
Allowing students to choose two comparative earthquakes to study, rather than prescribing case studies for the whole class enabled the students to take greater ownership of their inquiry. During the one-to-one conversations, each it was encouraging to see how much deeper their knowledge was compared to the cookie cutter / spoon fed answers I got last year. Allowing them to think independently produced a much broader range of contributing factors and impacts for each earthquake. Because they had chosen their earthquakes, students were not looking to me as much for the ‘correct’ answer and raised questions about conflicting statistics and information from different sources (rather than being prompted to do so). The evaluative aspect came through more naturally because they had done the spade work in order to find relevant evidence to support their conclusions.
The only thing that was a bit of an issue, was students not moving through the inquiry phases quick enough (especially those who become highly focussed on a particular aspect and have trouble transitioning). In future, I would be a bit more aware of this and track individual students more closely on Google Classroom to move them on more regularly – perhaps different doc for each inquiry stage would help?
Here are my new docs if you’re interested:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZsF7FwWHT76mwdlxZTxnuIKVYxDKVQTCTcX5RSYeIfE
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1DmAYU51zX10IMUQOLYKMtysVVtbIMvnZqenvAJ8NT-g
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1QMmr6xuIVSy9Ah45HrPLTn5WfZxuvbaUI7C5N7kx3H4
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wTmzyVt8hgotQgdKJU8_80-8esgKpHel1X_YmiFQdyo
Grade 10 – Careers Interview Processfolio
- Collect and formatively assess, then provide feedback to students while they work through the process of contacting an interviewee of choice, preparing questions, conduct the interview, send thank you email and then reflect
- Conduct one-to-one conversations in order to check progress and offer advice
Having a single processfolio doc was great because it allowed students (and me) to see where they were at in the project really easily. They found it satisfying to complete each stage and see where they had to go next, rather than having to move between multiple doc. They felt like it was a bit of a gift to be able to simply copy and paste email correspondence, even though they had already done the hard work!
Inevitably, the logistics were a bit challenging for setting up an alumni / acquaintance career interview within the schedule. This meant that the interim deadlines had to be adjusted to accommodate everyone. I am not sure what could be done about this, except set up an interview way ahead of time and then return to the final stages towards the end of the 0.5 credit course. Might be something to consider launching at the beginning of the course next year.
Next Steps…
- Identify a couple of other assignments to modify and incorporate some thinking skills recording tasks / assessment criteria for this term
- Research some more thinking skills approaches to experiment with in my everyday teaching. @ddoucet shared these gems with me:
- http://www.visiblethinkingpz.org/VisibleThinking_html_files/03_ThinkingRoutines/03a_ThinkingRoutines.html
- https://hbr.org/2012/02/the-5-whys.html
- http://tpri.wikispaces.com/file/view/05-2Bloom-16-17+Stems+for+Instruction.pdf
@lross I love your wonder wall activity. So simple but yet so effective in capturing capturing curiosity and wonder hidden amongst your students. A great way to kick off the unit. It is also interesting that you reflected on “how long” deep inquiry takes. I agree with your idea to move to Google docs. If managed properly you might be able to more efficiently manage and observe the inquiry process as it is happening due to the ease as which you can jump in and out of student G-docs. Perhaps if you break them down further into even more manageable chunks / steps students might be able to report back at each stage.
@ddoucet @lmustard @jbornstein @amacrae
Hi @jmedved,
Thank you for your suggestion about intermediate check ins, I will definitely try to keep closer tabs on some students next time. In addition to the lesson-by-lesson tasks outlined on the assignment sheet, I posted the ‘done-by’ schedule on Google Classroom. I think I need to build in some more formative feedback during the inquiry process beyond the one-to-one conversation assessments.
One thing I am still trying to get my head around is how to manage the rest of the class effectively, while conducting conversation assessments with individual students. All I have found that works so far, is to stop and wander around after every 4-5 conversations to check on student progress. I have found this makes it tricky to properly monitor individual students who require more support on extended tasks. Any suggestions for managing students while conducting conversation assessments?
Many thanks,
Laura
@lross I was thinking about the same thing that @nbrooksbank was. How in your sphere of resources might you shoulder tap to bring in to act as the “wandering eyes” and keep the class on track while you conduct your one on ones? Curriculum Director, Principal, Parent, Librarian, colleague?? People love to be asked and the extra hand would really help here.
Hey coaches – Any other ideas for @lross
@edaigle @nblair @amacrae @lmustard @jbornstein @rarcher @jsmith @ljensen @lbettencourt @egelleny @timrollwagen @tfaucher @nbendle @amcniven
Hi @jmedved,
I would happily rope someone else in to helping out while I do conversation assessments. I have approached a few people in the past, but scheduling tends to be an issue – ideally it needs to be the same person over two lessons (x2 different groups). Next time around, I will ask around again and see if anyone is available.
One issue is that the assessment periods tend to be cyclical and the people in my sphere tend to be busiest at these ‘crunch’ periods every 3-4 weeks when summative assessments are going on in most subjects. Ideally, I would love to spread out and chunk summative assessments in all subjects so that they were done throughout the units, rather than at the end. This is one of the strange things about the Ontario curriculum – the ‘culminating task(s)’ for each unit tend to come at the end. I am new to Ontario, so do not know if this has been prescribed in the past, but it is quite different to the ongoing assessment model in other systems. Perhaps this will catch up to better represent the current educational thinking regarding project based learning and growing success?
Many thanks,
Laura
@lross totally makes sense. Sound like you have done a bunch of thinking on this already 🙂
Hi @lross! Thanks for sharing your inquiry projects. This is an area that I’d like to learn more about, specifically, the role the Teacher-Librarian can play to support inquiry-based research projects. I’m wondering if you spoke with your school librarian about these assignments? If not, how come? I don’t ask that in a judgemental way – I ask because collaboration is something that I want to increase at my school but I find it challenging. I’m curious to hear from classroom teachers as to why they don’t bring their Teacher-Librarian in on research assignments? I appreciate any insight! Thanks 🙂
Hi @nbrooksbank,
I didn’t involve our teacher-librarian in this inquiry project. The honest answer is because it was a 4 lesson assessment with lots of moving pieces including teaching Grade 7 students the necessary skills for their first true geographic inquiry and conversation assessments. This was a lot to pack into a short time and I wanted to instill some pace to the project so that students kept on track. I wanted as much specialist subject knowledge to be included as possible, so was keen to deliver the project myself.
That said, I have involved our teacher-librarian in longer projects to help with delivering proper citation and research skills when we have more time. Purely on a personal note, I feel fairly confident providing the necessary support to my students, so do not often think to involve anyone else. Also, we do not have many Geography resources in the library, so I tend to have a stock of relevant internet resources that I recommend to students for each project.
I am sure I could make better use of our teacher-librarian. What role do you feel she might have played in this project / similar inquiries in the future? I am ashamed to admit, I have not given it much thought.
Thanks for getting in touch.
Laura
Thanks for your response @lross! I totally get steering the ship solo on this project, especially when you’re trying out something new!
I imagine your teacher-librarian might be able to help with curating more geography print resources for the library and likely help locate some great online resources as well. With online resources, I would also want to make sure there is some evaluation of the website by the students.
A teacher-librarian could help students create compelling and relevant research questions. She/he could assist students find resources for their assignments (print or online) and also include that evaluation element. When it comes to collecting the data, provide support on note-taking, using graphic organizers/charts, etc. to help synthesize understanding. Many teacher-librarians are also very knowledgeable with technology and may be able to provide ideas for how students might use different programs or tech to present their findings or show their learning.
My biased view, is that Librarians can be helpful in any and all areas of an inquiry-based research project.
I’m still trying to figure out the specific areas/ways I might be able to support my teachers / students. For example, should I try and work on one big research project with each class over the course of the school year… . start to finish – from creating questions to reflecting on learning? At my school, I’m not even sure if they follow a “model”. From a few projects I’ve seen, students are given a list of questions regarding a topic and they answer the questions (I should clarify this for a grade 2/3 class). Anyhoo.. getting side tracked!
Thanks for getting me thinking 🙂
@nbrooksbank – I think that @lmustard would totally agree. Another avenue to check out is the set up of the classroom. I have done a lot of work with student conferencing and – depending on the age – it can very difficult to monitor and ensure effective learning is happening.
I recommend that you play around with the structure of the classroom. The structure also indicates to students that something different is happening and that expectations have changed. Happy to chat more about how this might be possible.
I really enjoyed reading this thread,
garth.
Great conversation happening here! I would like to second what @nbrooksbank and @gnichols are saying, big time. Using a flexible space, such as your library (hopefully), can be great for student learning and collaborating with a teacher-librarian has proven benefits for students. In geographic inquiry, in addition to what Nicole mentioned, I see a librarian being able to add real value to students’ ability to search and parse a hit list, whether that’s in Google, a database or a library catalogue, and then determine what kind of sources meet their information needs. A scholarly source? A government document? A map? And why?
Let’s keep this thread going!
Laura
Hi @lmustard and @gnichols,
Thanks for your further input, I am getting lots of ideas for upcoming my curriculum experiments this term (I will blog about them before our next F2F). I love our library as a space, it does have a kind of open seminar / teaching area that can be booked, but students working on projects in their spare lessons tend to make it quite a noisy and distracting environment to conduct a class involving an individual assessment.
We do have an active learning lab with large work tables, spinny chairs and touch screen tvs. I intend to use this for an assessment @mbrims and I are doing with our Grade 11/12 Geography classes later this month. I think it will be great for interactive group projects, but wonder whether more traditional classroom set ups might be better for students to work on writing up individual assessments? During the initial phases of this Grade 7 inquiry, we did a couple of collaborative activities in pods, but then moved the desks back to rows for the write up sessions. I would be interested to see how Grade 7 handle the exciting furniture in the active learning lab! Maybe I will be brave and book it for a lesson sometime this term.
Thanks again,
Laura
Hi Laura,
Thanks for sharing what’s going on in your classroom! I love your take away that having students choose their own topics shifts their thinking away from trying to find the “correct” answer, and moves the teacher away from being the “sage on the stage” to the “guide on the side”. Such a small shift in the project can lead to a huge shift in student mindset!
Hi Laura,
I love the idea of your Wonder Wall activity. I think it’s a great way to show student thinking. I am also new to the inquiry process and highly recommend including your teacher librarian in your next project. We also reached out to our IT team and research buddies (grade 4 students) and requested some assistance during some of the stages. We couldn’t have done our projects without their assistance. I teach grade 2 so we definitely needed some extra hands on deck to assist with some of their reading levels etc.. Would it be possible to split your class between two assignments during assessment or other critical stages? This might make it a more manageable size to monitor and provide feedback. One group could work on their inquiry projects and the other could work on independent work.
Thanks for sharing your great ideas. : )
What an incredible conversation! I love that you’re teaming up with @mbrims for an upcoming assessment as well. There is no question that your wonderwall is a big hit and great way to drive inquiry. You have gotten a lot of feedback and you have been doing a lot of thinking around this as well, nice work!
You mentioned perhaps a different google doc for each of the inquiry phases and I wondered if you meant hyperdocs? If not, check it out here https://hyperdocs.co/index.php/templates it’s a great way to keep things in one place but have multiple docs with different purposes.
You should touch base with @amcniven to hear about his livescribe pen and how it is changing his life! It’s a high tech solution but something worth hearing about. Also, really high tech might be the Everlast by Rocketbook https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL2aOGwm3Ak but like Andrew McNiven said on a recent hangout “I could have just bought a regular pen I guess!”
What role does the physical act of writing play in your teaching? Check out LifeHacker’s run down of why writing by hand gets the full benefit of journaling for the brain https://lifehacker.com/journaling-showdown-writing-vs-typing-1792942629
Looking forward to connecting tomorrow!