• Welcome
• Overview
• Tell Me
• Show Me
• Let Me Try
• Resources
• School Leaders

• Supporting Principles
• Reading the Continuum

Principles

• Inquiry
• Constructivist
• Critical / Creative
• Deeper Understanding
• Responsibility
• Citizenship
• Multiple Literacies

Inquiry

Inquiry is a powerful methodology that engages students in pursuing personal, active, and authentic learning in depth. For example, inquiry is embedded in

• language arts as inquiry based learning
• mathematics as problem solving in the context of data analysis
• science as scientific inquiry and the design process
• social studies as social studies skills

As they engage in inquiry, students develop questions to guide their learning, research sources of information, synthesize new ideas, and share evidence of their understanding, all while reflecting on their learning. Furthermore, inquiry processes enable students to learn how to learn, and to become self-directed learners.

However, inquiry is not direct instruction and should not be thought of as a smooth and efficient process.  It is by its very authentic nature, messy and bumpy, encompassing a good portion of cognitive dissonance and ambiguity.  As teachers and students engage in inquiry, they can expect to feel uncertain as they start to explore their inquiry questions, optimistic as they begin to plan and gather information to support their inquiry, confused, frustrated, and doubtful as they try to make sense of the information they have gathered, a sense of clarity as they begin to produce a representation of their understanding, a sense of direction and confidence as they communicate their understanding to others, and perhaps a sense of satisfaction or maybe disappointment as they reflect on their inquiry process.