In this series I aim to bust some common myths I often hear in my travels supporting teachers and schools in adopting an Inquiry Mindset for their students. My hope is that we can begin to inform colleagues, parents, and students as to what the reality of inquiry truly is. Please help this movement by sharing these with your PLN.

Here we go with Myth #8!

Inquiry Myth #8 - Inquiry doesn’t have a place in all of our classrooms and grade levels

Reality:

Inquiry can be implemented in every classroom and at every grade level. All students have a question or wondering that can be tied to our curriculum.
Wonder and curiosity transcend subject areas and grade levels. The archaic structures of timetabling students into grade groupings and subjects has stripped students of feeling engaged in their learning.
How we engage students in becoming more active in learning, how we facilitate ownership over learning, how we encourage students to recognize and explore their questions and wonderings in our classrooms, all are hallmarks of the inquiry teacher.

At the high school level inquiry should belong in each subject area. What I mean by this is a Physics inquiry should be innately tied to the conceptual understandings and big ideas of the Physics curriculum. In the same way, a Chemistry inquiry should reflect the conceptual understandings and big ideas of the Chemistry curriculum. Whatever the subject, inquiry reframes what we teach with a focus on how we teach it. It is not a setting dependent pedagogy.