Week 3: Guided Inquiry

GUIDED INQUIRY

• Guided inquiry supports a constuctivist approach
• Guided Inquiry teachers lead students through projects by giving them starting questions, prompting new discussions with ideas and methods, or acting as a supervisor in other ways. 

Inquiry process provides • a means of integrating curricula and leads to holistic, multidisciplinary learning • a range of learning tasks appropriate for students at different developmental levels • opportunities to embed instruction in authentic contexts • an active role for students to share in the responsibility of planning • support for developing independent learning skills • a context for cooperation, collaboration, and community building

Implementing a guided inquiry approach from week 2 Task 2: Students are to get into groups and discuss what knowledge they have about nutrition and the food nutrients. Then they get given a specific nutrient and they must explain the role of that nutrient and present it to the other groups Sequencing Learning Activities What are Nutrients? and why are they important? Students to get into groups and discuss nutrition and nutrients in food Gather all the ideas and draw a mind map Research the specific nutrient online and collate all the information found. Write up all the information found onto a document Present the information to the class

The Inquiry Process: Activating Choosing a theme or topic. • Identifying and recording prior knowledge. • Asking initial questions. • Exploring and selecting primary and secondary sources. • Planning for inquiry Acquiring • Gathering, processing, and recording information. • Focusing the inquiry. Applying Planning to express learning. • Creating performance(s)/demonstration(s)/product(s). • Celebrating and reflecting

Another Example of Guided Inquiry 

Task: With the nutrient group that is given to you, create a 5-7 min presentation explaining what it is, examples of foods where it can be found (sources) and the role of that the nutrient group in the body

Put students into groups. (By doing so you are able to put the different learning styles together and make sure no one is excluded).

• Assign the groups a different nutrient group.
• Allow the students to look up the nutrient group online. (Basic information to start off with such as what is it?)
• Students look up sources of the nutrient
• Students look up the function that the nutrient plays in the body
• Students take the information and put it into a presentation to show the class.
• Teacher assesses this presentation to evaluate what the students have learnt

References

http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/inquiry/