Getting Started
Things to Consider When Designing Inquiry-Oriented Learning Tasks

There are four steps in the design of inquiry-oriented activities. Click on the link below to get a closer look at how to use the 'Design Down' approach to creating inquiry-oriented lessons for your students.

Other Things to Consider

• Presentation: How will you present the problem? Is presentation motivational? Is it relevant to the students' lives?
• Have you established clear and concise goals for: the students? yourself?
• Is reflection built into the process?
• Group size and group dynamics?
• If this is your first venture into an inquiry-based lesson? Have you prepared your students for this ‘different’ style of learning?
• Is the inquiry ‘too’ structured or maybe not quite structured enough?

Inquiry Instruction: Teaching Through Questions

While designing your unit ask yourself, what are the essential questions that point to big ideas and promote deep and essential understanding? It is an idea that requires ongoing reflection? Does the question promote higher level thinking?

Write questions that will frame and guide the unit. Will it lead students to learn important things? Can it sustain an engaging inquiry? Does it have many plausible answers? Will it hook the students?

In planning subject programs, teachers will take into account the need to provide students with the fundamental knowledge and skills outlined in each Ontario curriculum document.

Lesson design should encourage students to learn the basic concepts and to develop the skills outlined in each document. In these lessons:

• students' prior knowledge is valued and built upon
• students are supported to take risks, explore different problem-solving strategies, and communicate their understanding
• the teacher models and promotes a spirit of inquiry
• students actively explore, test ideas, make conjectures, and offer explanations
• social skills are developed to promote effective teamwork
• technology is integrated when appropriate
• cross-curriculuar connections are made to enable students to broaden their knowledge
• strategies are designed to support all students and, where appropriate, specific suggestions are included to further support at-risk learners, e.g. ways to differrentiate instruction, scaffolding, grouping
• emphasis on the relationship of the curriculum to the world outside the school must be paramount throughout the program