The Importance of Inquiry and Questioning

The importance of inquiry and questioning in my discipline is HUGE! Inquiry in math takes students from traditional explicit knowledge to multiple acceptable answers to the never ending question 'When will I ever use this?' I was delighted to find an incredible website, Inquiry Maths by Andrew Blair out of the UK, that provides prompts to get students asking questions, regulation choices for students to decide how they want to proceed with the inquiry, assessment for inquiry lessons, even online support. A priceless resource for getting started with math inquiry lessons. I found it interesting to note that Blair (2013) only orchestrated two full inquiry lessons per term, each taking approximately 5 hours in the classroom. He noted other smaller inquiries happened all the time but this wasn't an everyday occurrence. Knowing that made it real to me and achievable. 

Jacqui Murray in her blog, 11 Ways to Make an Inquiry-Based Classroom, discussed inquiry learning in this way "Learning isn't linear. It's a web that grows out from the central question. As such, your lesson plan may change dramatically based on student inquiry. If you teach three fifth grade classes, each will likely be different from the other. That's OK. Your challenge is to track what you did in each class and pick up from where you left off. That's OK, too. It's part of the job of teaching an inquiry-based class." Coupling that with Blair's non daily approach made meeting standards still seem achievable. Murray also advised to publish and share, inquiry based classrooms share knowledge which would help nurture the collective indwelling that Thomas and Brown discussed. 

A couple more math inquiry sites worth sharing:
Center for Inquiry-Based Learning has a list of math inquiry games and exercises. Not as thorough as the Inquiry Maths website but could be a good start and warm up to the bigger inquiry lessons. 
And wouldn't you know it, there's a Math Inquiry board on Pinterest. Most pins are smaller, hands-on discoveries, some have not much inquiry at all but still worth perusing. Found this little nugget on there to help stay on the inquiry path:

As far as nurturing students' passion in my classroom, I guess I need to start with knowing what their passions are. Once I know that, I can adjust the hooks and real life applications and inquiry prompts somewhat accordingly. Thomas & Brown suggest 'when the idea is to ask questions, diversity is a good thing.' I understood this to mean their diversity in both disposition and indwelling would deepen the peer to peer learning and that specific nurturing of each individual's passion was not necessary all the time. 

I needed the example of the basketball question addressed to the player for comparison. "At what angle and with what force must a person shoot a ball to make a basket 20 feet away?" An example of a poor attempt to nurture the student's passion with inquiry by masking a physics problem with a basketball theme, pretty transparent. I have guiltily been there! It was eye opening to see how asking the question differently would address the student's true interest in basketball and engage the student: "What is the best way to shoot a basketball?" Little changes, big results. 

Blair, A. (2013). Inquiry Maths. Retrieved from http://www.inquirymaths.com/

Center for Inquiry-Based Learning (2001). Retrieved from http://www.ciblearning.org/resource.exercise.php

Math Inquiry board on Pinterest. Retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/join/?action=follow&next=%2Fkcbombard%2Fmath-inquiry%2F

Murray, J. (n.d.). 11 Ways to Make an Inquiry-based Classroom. Retrieved from http://www.teachhub.com/11-ways-make-inquiry-based-classroom

Math Inquiry board on Pinterest. Retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/join/?action=follow&next=%2Fkcbombard%2Fmath-inquiry%2F