How do you ask an inquiry question?
Earlier this year I attended an Inquiry Night workshop, and I quickly tried to put into place an inqury lesson to aid in teaching literary analysis through Flowers for Algernon.
That project went smoothly, and I could see the benefits of using the simple question: How do authors make me enjoy their stories? Soon after asking that question, and using it to discuss tone, mood, style, and structure, the students began speaking and writing about stories in ways they probably haven’t before — as purposely constructed to create meaning and resonate with the reader, versus written on a whim.
The students have since analyzed several short stories and poems through in-class discussion and through written pieces in journals, online, and even created one of the most difficult tests I’ve ever seen — my students, when they took the test complained that it was “really hard,” but they kept pushing until they’d finished their thinking about these questions. We even handed the test over to the other teachers in the building and even they said it was a thought-provoking test, that the students found it difficult, and that they were surprised it was written by students.
Now it’s time to take literary analysis one step further, and use that step as a lead-in to what I’m planning as a major inquiry project.
Back in my days as a student-teacher, I remember building an inquiry unit by starting with an important question, and finding the required and available materials to supplement it. That in itself was a lengthy process that required much discussion with other students, but we pulled it off on paper.
On paper.
Which, as I’m sure you know, means jack in the classroom. Things always look great on paper, and whatever time you take to ensure that all that paperwork goes over smoothly with 150 teenagers, the result rarely resembles your expectations. That’s why I like to keep things open-ended and fluid in my classroom — sometimes we need extra time to go over a few things, and sometimes our work extends far beyond what was planned (and even that can completely change the structure of a unit).
Two years ago, when I was applying at different schools for the job I now have, I visited a private school that prides itself in teaching through inquiry. While I was observing the teachers and students, the principal asked me to sit through a meeting about the following year’s inquiry plan, anf that’s when I realized just how difficult this type of planning can be. Whereas I’d constructed my student-teaching plans by startign with the question, I saw these teachers talking about materials first, inquiry question later.
And it was obviously a difficult process because the meeting ended abruptly with the main teacher’s statement: “I think I know what kind of question I want to focus on, but I haven’t worked it out just yet.”
The meeting ended right there, because there was nothing to discuss; nowhere to go. And now I find myself in a similar predicament, but with less time to spare.
For this coming semester, I have my materials ready, and I have an inquiry question in mind, but I haven’t boiled it down to THE DEFINITE QUESTION, and that’s where I need some help.
Here’s what I have to work with
- I know we’re going to finish off this semester with an analysis paper.
- The students will analyze one of two poems: Fear, by Gabriela Mistral, and Identity, by Julio Noboa.
- Fear shows a mother struggling with the idea that her child will one day grow up and leave her; she worries that she may lose a part of herself when her daughter becomes an individual.
- The narrator of Identity is much like the daughter’s voice from the previous poem — he/she talks about individuality as a sort of enlightenment; that in order to be an individual, one must do practice and embrace that individuality
The students will analyze these two poems and create a paper discussing the makeup of one or both poems, or compare and contrast the two.
- The next step is to read more poems
- Following that analysis paper, we’ll begin our Holocaust research unit.
- Major themes of the Holocaust unit will be introduced through poems written by children in the Terezin Concentration Camp.
- Research and Reading
- We’ll read the play “The Diary of Anne Frank,” and
- We’ll take part in an extensive research unit on WWII and the Holocaust.
- The students will write research papers
- Presentation
- The students will create a “Holocaust Museum” to display the knowledge they’ve gained through research.
- They’re excited about this, because they remember last year’s student museum, even though it was only up for one hour.
- This year, we’ll make sure it’s up for an entire two days.
- Further Reading and Writing
- Now, thanks to a really cool opportunity, we should have an entire class set of Ayn Rand’s Anthem, which is described on the above link as:
[Anthem] tells of a dark world of the future, a society so collectivized that even the word “I” has vanished from the language and one man’s defiance of that society. Anthem’s theme is: the meaning and glory of man’s ego
There you go. All the stuff I have planned for the rest of the year, in a nutshell. As I said at the beginning of this post, I’m looking to work this all into one single Inquiry Unit, but I don’t have the question down just yet. I can see some themes coming together through all these works:
- Society
- Individuality
- Oppression
- Suppression
- People and their needs
- People and their desires
- etc.
But I’m not quite sure how to tie them together. How can I ask a single important question that encompasses these texts and ideas, and leads students toward a path of discovery, understanding, analysis, creation.
Will this question focus on Society? The individual? I just don’t know.
Any suggestions?
Filed under: Lesson Plans, New Stuff, Previous Post, Questions, Teaching, analysis, free stuff, thinking out loud
This is a first time inquiry try, but what about
–How does an individual impact society and/or how does society impact an individual?–
BTW-do you have any resources to share from your inquiry night? Books to recommend? I get the major premise, but feel I need an in-depth study of inquiry learning before jumping off that board.
Thanks! Hope my idea at least gets you thinking in the right direction!
That’s a great question because it allows for the students to think abtou themselves as part of a larger monster, and that they have the opportunity to contribute to that monster or be rules by that monster. Excellent question.
Can it be honed a little more? How can we take that idea and make it into a question that drives the students to action?
Thanks for your input, aquiram. Seriously. I was absolutely lost.
As for a suggestion for inquiry books, the first one that comes to mind is Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe’s book, Understanding by Design.
It’s a very technical book, but gets right to the heart of teaching through inquiry by starting your thinking process from the end and working backward (the exact opposite of what I’ve done here). The authors focus on the outlining a final product and working backward to the beginning.
I also see that McTighe has another book out that might aid in making UbD more easily applicable and understandable, Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design.
I haven’t read The Art of Classroom Inquiry, by Ruth Shagoury Hubbard and Brenda Miller Power, but it looks like it’s more along the lines of what you’re looking for — a great starter piece.
I see there’s a book focused more on Inquiry questions to aid in writing: Inquiry: Questioning, Reading, Writing, by Lynn Z. Bloom, Edward M. White, Shane Borrowman.
In Amazon’s synopsis of the book, I find a question ultimately like the one I’m searching for and which you helped me find. It looks like this:
What are human rights and responsibilities?
But even that question needs a little more punch at the end — or maybe some follow up essential questions:
How do we protect our rights?
How do we define/shape our responsibilities?
What do you think about those?
Thanks again for your input, aquiram. Hope these book suggestions help.
I’ll take a stab at this too, but first let me think out loud about your current questions and focus. I like your thinking, especially how you strive to connect the varied literary experiences and texts. You have a wonderful concept here. A few years ago, with my 9th graders (in a co-taught intterdisciplinary class) we undertook a similar venture on a smaller scale. We read Night by Elie Wiesel. Then, in a Literature Circles format, students chose another book that dealt in some way with a crime against humanity - the Armenian Genocide, Cambodia, the Japanese interment camps… At the same time in history class, they studied the different genocides. We finally finished with Lord of the Flies and an examination of what makes humans act the way we do.
Anyway, our focusing questions were something like How does society shape the individual’s identity and In what ways can an individual shape society? Would something like that work for you?
I wonder if your question about human rights and responsibilities is not entirely applicable to the two poems, which deal with human nature, the impact of family… The question seems more applicable to the Holocaust literature, with its sense of moral and ethical dilemnas, while the poetry deals more closely with human nature, everyday choices and struggles, the difficulties of growing old. Just some thoughts… I hope they help more than hurt…
BTW, your site is most accurately labeled - I’ve enjoyed reading along with your reflections. Thanks.
First, some rambling: You’re not examining the positive ways that society and the individual interact — you’re looking at the frightening ways that individuals are destroyed by society. Your question concerns that line between the individual and the group — what happens when an individual is denied being. And yet, the very existence of these works — most especially the poetry from the children of the camps — proves that humanity is creative and grows even in the most terrible of places.
So: Your question might be dual, “What creates me? What destroys me?” Or, “How does my group/tribe/society both create and destroy what I can be?”
Excellent points from the both of you, and helps point out what’s lacking in this unit.
The poems don’t quite fit the same theme as the rest of the readings, but they do contain a bit of that “authority v. subject” found in the lengthier readings. Finding a way to bridge these two topics might come in handy.
Secondly, the readings, overall, do portray a defeatist ideal. I need more positive-flavored readings in the mix. Any suggestions there?
That, or I need to reshape the question again.
Keepgraycie’s question: How does my group/tribe/society both create and destroy what I can be?
Add to it:
How am I a reflection of my society?
[...] The letdown 01.3.07 Posted by Nobodyknows in Rant, students, Teaching, Reflection. trackback School began and I tried to treat it as a completely normal day of school. I wanted to get on with the final large assignment of the semester — the true Literary Analysis paper. (More on that, and my plans for this year here.) [...]