Inquiry Based Learning Notebook

Inquiry Based Learning Notebooks

Hey, y'all. There's been a huge push for inquiry based learning lately (which is really pretty similar to Phenomenon Based Learning), but where on earth do we begin?

 Right here. 

There's no point in reinventing the wheel each time you do an inquiry unit. That's why I've put together these templates. 

These inquiry notebook pages are so flexible that they can be used with pretty much any inquiry topic. 

We start off our inquiry unit with a quick QFT session and start talking about the things we wonder and what questions we have about the topic. Once students have a few key questions ready that they can begin to investigate, we begin our research. 

Now I know that there are certain standards that have to be "covered," but please know it's super easy to cover the standards even when students are creating their essential questions. If students don't outright ask the questions they need to, as the teacher you can guide them to think about certain aspects of the topic which will affect their research questions. 

We begin our research with the use of learning plans, books from the library, experiments, and hyper docs with links to specific resources. Their inquiry notebooks contain multiple graphic organizers to help students keep track of their research and ideas and help them to make connections between ideas. 

At the end of the unit, students show their understanding of the topic in different ways. Some of my students choose to write about it, some make posters, and some use apps like Flipgrid to explain their findings. Students could also create slide shows, present the findings of their experiments, create brochures, or any other number of things. 

I let my first graders choose from three different representations for the first few inquiry units so that they knew what was expected. I wasn't super particular about how they showed their understanding. I just checked off the things they said, wrote, or drew as it pertained to the concepts. If the missed something, I asked them questions until I could tell if they understood the big ideas or not. 

This inquiry notebook includes a ton of organizers, writing pages, experiment prompts, maps, diagrams, and more to get them started. It also includes some tips for use for you and some ideas for inquiry units. It's very likely that more pages will be added as we come across more topics, so get it early while it's cheap! 

You can find the inquiry unit at my Teachers Pay Teachers store here. Be sure to follow me while your there so you stay up to date with the latest resources. I'm always adding new things and you don't want to miss out!

I hope you found some ideas you can use in your own classroom here and I hope you have a wonderful week. I'll talk to you soon. 

Stay cozy,