In this chapter, Burke provides the final resources and
suggestions for teachers to begin designing inquiry-based instructional
units. He emphasized that, “such units
are best designed through collaboration”.
This statement instantly sent my wheels in motion. Our school district now requires teachers to
meet in Professional Learning Teams, or PLT’s for 30 minutes a week. If administration does not send us specific
instructions on what to do each week, we wind up doing nothing. Why should busy administrators have to take
time to plan what we as professional educators must specifically be doing each
week? Our school has already introduced
the concept of designing lessons around essential questions. That is what this time should be used
for. Each team should be required to
develop one unit per quarter. Since full
implementation of Common Core Standards (which this type of unit development
fully supports) will begin in the 2014-2015 school year, the 2013-2014 school
year could be spent building this “bank” of units that teachers can use to
implement inquiry-based instruction AND Common Core Standards.
I am currently in the pool for a teacher leader position for
the 2013-2014 school year, and this is exactly the type of initiative that I
would like to bring to my school as a teacher leader.
Burke stated that standards-based instruction can easily
take place within the inquiry-based unit.
When beginning to develop such units, teachers must determine what ideas
and questions arise naturally and use those to design a unit around. Appendix D in the book is entitled, “Designing
a Standards-Based Curriculum” and contains numerous resources to help implement
this type of planning.
Burke closed the book by sharing three “fundamental and
well-established principles of learning that are particularly important for
teaching” from Linda Darling-Hammond’s book Powerful
Learning: What We Know About Teaching for Understanding (2008).
In short, these principles are:
- Connect students’ prior knowledge to new concepts being taught.
- Students must not only learn facts, but also learn how to “organize knowledge in ways that facilitate retrieval and application”.
- Teach students to “take control of their own learning by having a set of learning strategies, defining their own learning goals, and monitoring their progress in achieving them.”
In order to implement the above-mentioned principles,
Darling-Hammond added the following suggestions for teachers:
- Create meaningful activities that connect to real-world skills.
- Use active-learning processes to engage students.
- Connect activities to students’ background knowledge on the topics being discussed.
- Scaffold the learning process based on the specific needs of students.
- Continuously assess student understanding and adapt instruction as needed.
- Make learning objectives clear, provide constant feedback to students and allow time to work on important tasks in class.
- Encourage metacognition and student ownership of the learning process.
The suggestions provided in this chapter are reminders of
highly-effective teaching methods in any situation, but are especially helpful
to keep in mind as one begins the process of developing thought-provoking and
engaging lessons designed around essential questions.
Burke also provided the following resources to
aide in the planning process:
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