Inquiry-Based Learning

Definition

According to the Oxford Learner's Dictionary. INQUIRY means: a special official group of people that investigates a particular problem. Hence, the Inquiry-Based Learning method is based on the constructivist theory in which students construct their own knowledge through experience. This method is basically used for investigations, and students take the responsability of doing it for their own learning.

Student's Roles

- Leader: depening on the level in which inquiry is applied, there's going to be a different role for the students, but in the most of the cases, there must be a leader. The leader is the one that make everybody work, he or she organises the investigation, and he or she guides the group in the right way. A leader must always exist in a group work, and since this case is about investigations, the leader is more than necessary.

- Searcher: all the students must be involved in the group work. As mentioned before, the leader just organises, but the duty of searching information must mutual. Everybody has to come up with different experiences and opinions. For inquiry learning is definitely important the participation of all the students. Through the methods of data collection, every student is going to have different opinons, but they complement the ones of the other partners.

Teacher's Roles

- Developer of questions: The teacher provides the students the open-end question which is going to be useful for the students investigate and apply all the things that inquiry requires.

 - Facilitator:  the teacher only guides the students with the open-end question and some resources in which the students may find the answer for that interrogant. Also, depending on the level of inquiry that is used, the teacher facilities from everything to little parts. For example, when the level is structured, the teacher provides the question, and all the resources that students will need to investigate to find an answer to the interogant. On the other hand, if the level is open, the teacher only give some clues to the students, and he provides just the general information about the investigation that the students will develop.

Characteristics of IBL

 - Student's engagement: the IBL method requires the total participation of the students for it being succesfull. Since they are going to analyze data with the other memebers of the group, they need to have their opinions ready, and if they are not prepared, they will fail the task.

- Students take the lead: the teacher gave some "independence" to the students, so they need to take the lead of the investigation. The teacher is not totally implied on the process of investigating.

- Students check knowledge, identify learning needs: After the investigation finishes, all the members of the group get together to analyze the opinons and knowledge that each of them got.

- Student's curiosity to explore: this method requires a lot of desire from the student to investigate; so that, some structures give them the freedom to investigate about what they want to know.

- Student's responsability: this is the most important characteristic from this method because each of the students have to care about his or her own work. When the analysis of data comes, each of the members has to have something to say.

Benefits of using IBL in Class

- Students development of skills: the student developes some skills that can be useful not only for IBL but also for their lives because skills such a "leadership" can be found in someone that though he or she would never have it.

- Increase responsability through independe work: Since the students can work alone for some time, they care for their own information, and they really want to be useful in the group, so they can put more effort on searching and collecting data.

- Teacher relaxation: it seems that during the traditional methods, the teacher is always busy, he or she is always running, and he or she finishes really tired. So this method gives him or her some relaxation moments because he is still working but not as hard as he or she traditional does.

- Practice of collecting data methods: the students most of the time doesn't have the opportunity to make observations, or to make an interview. So this method gives them the opportunity to use those methods for collecting data.

- Avoiding long writing times: this method is a recess for the students being writing all the time in class, so they find other ways of collecting data like recording voices or recording videos. Writing is boring sometimes, and to do this type of activites are good for relaxing your hands.

Warm-Ups

According to "Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English," warm-up means to perform or speak first at an event, so that the poeple listening are relaxed or excited before the main singer, speaker, etc. comes on.

When teaching, warm-ups are really useful to make the students feel comfortable with the environment, and they make them forget, just for a moment, the main purpose of the class. But also, they are used to cheer up the students who are feeling lazy, sad, or dissapointed at the very beginning of the class. Also, shyness is one of the most common feelings that students show when they are taking a class in which they must participate and speak in order to learn.

Warm-ups such as "Yarn Web," "Last Name Adjective," "People to people," "All you can write" and others are really funny and entertaining for any level in which you are teaching. But, you may take into account the quantity of knowledge that your students may have. In a Basic English class for example, you can do some of these activities, but it may be a little challenging for students that don't know anything about this new language. However, they may have listened to a pair of words in a movie, a song or in a magazine. So that, some of these activites can be useful. In the case of advanced levels, any of these activities are just entertaining and exciting because at this level, they have increased their vocabulary in order to participate and give multiple choices.

When I participated in these activities, in some of them I didn't know what to expect. Some of them were new for me, and I haven't done it before. But as soon as I received the necessary instructions for each one, I knew what to do.

When I participated in the warm-up "Last Name Adjective," I could notice that everybody were laughing because of the adjectives that all people were using to describe themselves. Also, people could know something that their partner likes to do. Furthermore, I liked the activity because it's a good way of introducing people.

I would have changed the way we wrote our names. The recycled paper was nice, but I would have given them a color paper and a piece of masking tape for them to paste the piece of paper in their shirts. In that way, I would have used the piece of paper to refer to them in the class. For example: "Funny George can you give me an example of this type of sentence?"

When I participated in the warm-up "All you can write," I liked that we could test our ability to write fast and to remember words in English, and I realized that under preasure, you forget about every word you know. It was funny, but noisy.

I would have changed the participation method on the board. So that, all people would have participated. A person would have written a different word on the board, since we were in a line it would have been more funny to run and write words. Also, I would have tried to do the activity on a page, and I would have count the letters by myself; so that, I would have check spelling and writing quality.

Warm-ups are really funny. They cheer up students, and they make feel students comfortable in the environment. They are used at the beginning at the class. But, I would had a "Warm-up B" just in case the class turns boring for students. I like to use technology a lot, and if I'm using the projector to teach the class, I would include a funny quote or a funny picture in the middle just to make students feel good. Also, a five-minutes-activity can be useful to keep the class interesting.