Well, why can’t it? Why can’t we tweak lessons to engage students in more inquiry based learning each and every day?

At Gallup Hill Elementary School we have an annual event called Science Day. During this day we collaborate with local businesses and parents who visit our school and provide instruction in various aspects of science. We have examples of engineering, recycling, energy efficiency, Marine Science, etc. This year we even provided students with lessons about a new field of science called Bio-mimicry, which looks to phenomena in nature to mimic characteristics and use this knowledge to create innovative designs. The day is a hands-on exploration style of learning and students delight in anticipation of this special day.

The presenters share information about their chosen field, but most importantly they let students explore. The learning students  process through during this day involves tweaking, and because of their varied adjustments they receive immediate feedback. Why don’t we provide students with more opportunities to explore theories, make potential errors, and adjust based on their knowledge, their intuition, and their guesses more often? Why is the bulk of our teaching about transfer of knowledge rather than mindful exploration?

In the Dan Meyer video: Math Class Needs a Makeover https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWUFjb8w9Ps he shares that often we give students too much information when asking them to problem solve. We present the problem and then give them all the information they need, along with the sequential steps, to find the solution. And, if that is not enough, we then refer them to a problem just like the one we’re asking them to solve, and if that is still not enough we refer them to the answer (and where it’s located) in the back of the book. Why not begin more lessons with interesting problems and let students work through to solve them without our immediate assistance? It is rare in life that the problems we need to solve come with step-by-step directions or that we have all the information we need before we begin. Often, we begin real-world problem-solving by figuring out what information we need to know to begin to work towards a solution. And, more often than not, we jump in and try a few theories towards a solution that ultimately work to provide us with the necessary conceptual understanding of the new knowledge.

This kind of “thinking through” to solutions that I saw so frequently during our recent Science Day, was what made the learning so fun and engaging for our students. They tweaked the rockets they had designed or the boats they made of clay before the actual theoretical learning occurred. What made them decide to change a structural element of a design to increase buoyancy, or trim a fin in an effort to increase flight distance? What core knowledge or guess work led them to that decision?

On this day I also witnessed a lot of collaboration – a different sort than our usual manufactured or facilitated collaboration. Students needed to check in with their peers, to replicate, and to ask clarifying questions in order to gain the essential learning to succeed with the design.

So, how do we do this more often? We first need to recognize the benefits of this type of constructivism – Piaget’s preferred method of learning. Then we need to infuse more opportunities for exploratory learning when lesson planning. Often we teach scientific principles and mathematical properties through direct instruction and ask students to memorize these fundamental properties without ever actually testing them out and experiencing them. When we do “allow” for opportunities for students to test, often the outcomes are pre-established and the experiments are not experimental in nature they are like the step-by-step math problems referenced above.

These quasi experiments often lack the trial and error that problem solving requires, in fact they lack a problem; they are exercises to work through and complete to determine the answer. Students often forget these concepts after assessments because they’ve never had a chance to make sense through problem solving and purposeful practice. The relevance of the concept is left a mystery and therefore its importance (to them) is never actualized.