Engaging Readers and Writers with Inquiry ch.3

Chapter 3 Asking the Guiding Questions: Reframing the Existing Curriculum into Inquiry Units

This chapter cleared up so many questions I have regarding inquiry, essential questions and enduring understadings. As a district we have focused on writing essential questions and enduring understandings never really differentiating between the two. I knew that essential questions were the big picture, and now know that the enduring understandings are the "absolute bottom line goals for student achievement." The enduring understandings are what we want the students to know at the end of the unit.
The chapter talked about turning standards into essential questions and gave quite a few examples of what that looks like in all content areas. It discussed the importance of writing questions that require evaluation and judgement, essentially asking "how" and "why" instead of "what" questions. There is a section in the chapter that discusses common flaws to watch for when starting inquiry. This section helped me to understand what I did wrong with my inquiry projects last year. It was refreshing to know that the mistakes I made are very common when starting inquiry in the classroom.
My study group used the text rendering protocol while reading the chapter. It was interesting because we had many of the same sentences and passages highlighted to share. We were in agreement that the chapter was invaluable and answered many of our questions regarding inquiry. We talked quite a bit about the impact inquiry can make on student engagement and how we will use it in our classrooms next year.
In additon to the text rendering protocol, I did a lot of annotating and reflecting while reading this chapter. It was a long chapter and easy to read but I noticed that I slowed down my pace while reading and did quite a bit of rereading because I found the material so interesting and useful.