How do we know what our students know?

Traditionally, teachers have always used exams, tests, and quizzes to assess student knowledge of a concept.  However, in the process, it is hard to know whether or not students are actually paying attention and taking in the information the teacher specifically wants them to know.  Teachers may use homework assignments and such as assessments along the way, but even with homework assignments, students may receive help from others or may work different when under home conditions as opposed to school conditions and vice versa.   It is especially discouraging when the students’ assessments reflect they didn’t learn a thing.  Most importantly, what these standard forms of assessment don’t cover, as well, is how students derived that information. I can remember sitting in 10th grade Geometry class while students around me passed around a graphing calculator that had the answers to all the proofs typed on it.  They passed the calculator around, that student copied all the answers and they passed it to the next student.  The teacher never knew what was happening. Everyone received their high scores and moved on to the next concept. All the while, the teacher concluded that the way he was teaching was a great job and continued to do the same old lecture and notes he’d done for decades thus far.  

This obviously doesn’t work with the classrooms of today with trying to invoke an inquiry based learner.  We teachers need not only to see if the student can derive the “correct” answer, but whether or not the student understands HOW and WHY they got that answer.  As well as working on the “hows” and “whys” of content, we are also trying to teach our learners to be able to ask questions to help their learning and measure their learning process along the way.

When I taught 7th grade Advanced Math many moons ago, I would often “quiz” my students when we finished a concept.  Though it was the traditional paper and pencil quiz, I would often insert self-assessment based questions along the way in the quiz.  I would also, in addition to the correct answer, include a section with the problem that asked students to explain their process of receiving that answer or what they’re thinking was in getting that answer. As a Math teacher, this helped me not just mark answers right or wrong, but see where my students’ thinking was deriving and how they were working the problems and help them find the correct answer or use the correct method by going through those steps with students. 

I think in addition to asking your students to explain their logic and reasoning is also getting to know your students.  We, as teachers, are with our students 8-9 months out of the year, it is our responsibility to know how our students learn, what makes them tick and what their interests are. This isn’t just filling out an “All About Me” checklist at the beginning of the year and that’s that.  It is more about interacting and observing your students on a daily basis as well as learning what interests them, what makes them happy, angry and sad. We get to know which learners prefer pencil and paper over videos on the Promethean board. We know which students are better at investigations and which are visual and auditory learners.  Once we know all about our student, we can easily know what they know and we can assess that knowledge.   

The Struggle is Real: Inquiry Roadblock

            One of my biggest struggles as an educator has always been time management within my classroom. I can never seem to fit everything I need to get done into my school day. When I plan great lessons, they always take longer than my allotted time frame to complete. As a result, another lesson has to be cut short or cut out entirely. Then I get behind in that content area and find it hard to catch back up.

            Because of my time management problem, I find it nearly impossible to include a lot of inquiry into my daily lessons. Inquiry has become an important part of our standards. I know it is important and I see the value in it, but how do I incorporate it into content lessons and still maintain a set instructional schedule?

            I have attempted full-on inquiry lessons on several occasions. For a while, I worked hard to create blended learning units using science and social studies content. Students selected their own research topic based on the standards, completed independent research, and worked with somebody that chose the same topic to create a final presentation to share with their classmates. For example, students could choose to research earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, or landslides for our natural disasters (fast processes) unit because those are the specific processes the standard requires students to know. They used books, encyclopedias, and Blendspaces I created to research their topics. Then they created a replica of their natural disaster (to make it STEM) and used some sort of technology presentation to share what they learned. The problem is the amount of time these blended learning projects took. (I should have prefaced this by stating that I teach third grade.) Third graders do not have much experience with research and struggle to find the information they need, paraphrase it, list the source, etc. My kids greatly enjoyed these projects, but they took a solid three weeks to complete. The other problem is that these projects only addressed one small part of a standard; the rest still had to be taught! I ended up running out of time to teach all of the content that my students needed to know.

            In addition to the time constraints, I know inquiry should be student-centered but I feel like teaching kids how to discover new material on their own requires a lot of teacher guidance. On top of figuring out how to create good inquiry lessons that involve science experiments and hands-on social studies activities, I would love to figure out how to add inquiry as a station in math (and of course reading). I just don’t know where to start!

So I guess my big question for all of you is, what do you do to include daily inquiry in your lessons? What are some examples of good inquiry lessons (in every subject) that you do regularly within your classroom? How do you manage the time needed to complete a good inquiry lesson? What are simple ways I can introduce inquiry to my students so that they can do it independently?

I would love to know your thoughts. I am open to any and all ideas! I think if I can figure out a good way to start, then I can use that to spark new ideas and new thinking in order to create the best possible lessons and learning experiences for my students.