Here are some strategies to keep in mind when teaching for inquiry learning:
- Encourage students to research and work things out for themselves
- Encourage students to articulate draft ideas (eg. student talk)
- Help students put their learning together by using strategies such as graphic organisers
- Address concepts from different angles
- Provide interactive feedback about the learning that is specific and immediate
- Provide time to process learning
- Help students identify problems, using scaffolding for each step of the inquiry process
- Encouraging students to use a variety of resources
Here are some ideas for interactive classroom activities:
- Encourage community members to give talks or demonstrate something cultural
- Organise a field study where students use worksheets, explore artefacts or take photography
- Promoting projects such as creating own picture book about personal heritage
- Excursions to sites of historical, political and environmental significance
- Constructing art pieces
- Using ICT to create blogs and Wikis
- Share discussions with class or small group (eg. peer teaching)
- Run competitions or quests that involve everyone in class
- Using maps and compasess to explore the outdoor environment
- Conducting and writing up a science experiment, then graphing the results using ICT
