Front-end loading

A misconception about inquiry based learning is that children have complete control over what they will learn. It may conjure images in your mind of students using computers to delve deeper into whatever they are interested in. That's not totally true. Inquiry does allow students the freedom to learn about an aspect they are more interested in, but this learning is guided and supported by the teacher. There is still a place for direct instruction throughout an inquiry project. I sort of think of it as a feedback loop. When you have an over arching question, you may need several mini-questions to explore that question, especially when you work with a cross-curricular thematic approach. Propose the question, front-end load some of the more interesting material, have students question and wonder, represent learning, use formative assessment to determine how students are taking in the new content, and teach again as needed. There are times when students are teaching each other. There are times where you are directly giving them information. There are also many opportunities for you to steer the learning through exploration. It is a really exciting process. For me, every unit develops as I go. I know where I want to end up, the road map changes and adjusts as the project gets underway. I adjust the road as I determine where the projects needs to go to get to our outcome. To me, this is the best part of teaching. This allows me to have autonomy as a teacher, and to use my professional judgement and creativity to respond to the students and their needs. (I do need to say here that this is my interpretation to this point on my journey. It will be interesting to see if I agree with myself a year from now or two years from now.)

For the past four or five weeks, my students have done a lot of exploration though art around identity, stereotypes, and culture. Something I had not mentioned was that during this entire time, I was supporting student learning around First Nations, Inuit, and Metis history as set by our provincial curriculum. For two one-hour sessions per week, my students received explicit instruction around treaties: what was promised and what promises were kept. They also received direct instruction around the Indian Act and residential schools. Students learned about assimilation and genocide - all ugly parts of our history that many Canadians have forgotten or were never taught in the first place. This instruction was done by our ELO Catalyst teacher, Bev Schell. To get this information to the students in a quick and logical manner, Bev used powerpoints, and handouts. The handouts were largely used to track student thoughts, questions, and learning around the content. Often, I modeled my own mind-mapping for the students on the board. Some students directly copied my thoughts, and points, other students used the own. I didn't mind if the students copied my work. I think this is part of the gradual release of responsibility: some students still need my support with tracking their thinking.

We now have the framework of "knowledge" mostly completed. To understand the complex issues facing First Nations and Metis people, students needed this background information. With my background in Native Studies, I have to say that even I was able to learn new information from Bev. From the information that she passed onto us, we were left with big wonders and questions. What if the land that was promised had been given? Would First Nations people have been able to farm and become self sustaining? If the Indian Act hadn't been created to assimilate First Nations people into the dominant culture, would there be so much poverty and alcoholism? These are deep questions that my students are now wondering.

For the last two weeks my students have been exploring poverty. We have been using resources at Saskatoon Poverty Reduction . This is a great website that has videos and educational tools that can help put a face to poverty and help the general public to have a better understanding of the challenges faced by the working poor and individuals living in poverty. I had my students view these three videos:

This video is about a working poor family from the inner city of Saskatoon.

This video follows the coach of the Saskatoon Blades hockey team as he participates in a Saskatoon Food Bank Challenge. The most powerful part of the learning in this video, for me, was when he said that if he had to eat like this, he could NOT do the job he does.

This video has stats and statistics related to health and wealth. It's WAY TOO fast for most people to read, so I had to pause it, and we watched it several times to record all of the information. (Watching it over to record the information was a student initiative.)
Once we had watched these videos we had several discussions about poverty. I really had to work hard to gain student trust around this issue. Many students struggled with the idea that poverty is not always the "fault" of the individual living in poverty. As a society, we often think of "those people" as lazy and if they would just work harder... Well, students in a classroom are like a little "mini society" and we had to work through some of the ideas they had around poverty. I had to reassure my students that they were not to feel guilty about this information. They might have different opinions than the views that are being expressed in the classroom, that's okay too. I just asked them to be open to learning something new. For the most part the information spoke for itself. I witnessed a lot of growth during these lessons. I saw minds being expanded and new understandings emerging. It was pretty cool.

Currently, my students are developing menu plans for a week for a family of four. They are using flyers to price their menus for the week. Once they have a total amount for the week, they are to half that amount and make changes or substitutions to their food menus. When they have completed that, they are going to make a Venn diagram to see if there are similarities in the foods that they took off the list and added. The middle part will be the foods that stayed the same, and the two outer circles will be the food that they added or took off. We did this activity after I "front-loaded" the videos, and students jig-sawed information about nutrition (carbs, proteins, vitamins...)

Where are we going? My students will eventually take a trip to 2oth Street to visit some of the businesses in the area and the Friendship Inn. This is inquiry: physically going to learn. Today a residential school survivor is coming to our school to speak to students about her experience. I hope this helps them to make a connection - they can connect all of this abstract learning to a real live person. They can see how the Indian Act has impacted the life of a real person. I think it will be powerful.

Again, I have to thank the Saskatchewan Arts Board for our TreatySmarts grant. Without this grant, all of the cool activities would not be possible.