Inquiry
Questions Lead to Questions Lead to Questions Lead to Questions…
Before we left for the autumn break, we looked at questioning that leads to good inquiry. We came up with a list of ideas of what they think inquiry is. (see the first picture below)
Students then started with a question and instead of just looking for answers to the question, they brainstormed questions that it can lead to. We started with a model question to provide an example. The question was: Why do we need to go to school. The picture shows the students trail of questions that developed from this question.
The model question and brainstorm
Following this model, the students worked in groups and were presented with a question that they needed to use to brainstorm the questions it leads to.
When finished, they presented their questions trail to the class.
Students brainstorm their own question trail.
The brainstorming continues…
Sources of Information
The above mentioned questioning exercise led to a session with Mrs. Woche, the librarian, about sources of information. She asked the students to brainstorm how we could find the answers to these questions. They discovered that we can find information in many ways, such as asking an expert, looking in books and encyclopedias, using dictionaries, searching the internet and conducting interviews. Next Mrs. Woche introduced us to the encyclopedias and National Geographic magazines and described how we can use these sources of information to research a topic. We then looked at the online encyclopedia Britannica and the students had a chance to see how to access information using this online information source. This is a great source of information that they can access at home. The link to this website is: http://school.eb.co.uk/elementary
To log in to this site use the following username and password:
Username: winterthur
Password: bolse
Students explain how they came up with their questions
