Activity: Inquiry strategies

'''In this activity I talk about the importance of using right and accurate questions in class. Firstly I explain the type of questions that you can use in class, the steps to create a good climate, and after that, I lay out the questions that I consider appropiate for my PYP planner 'living in society'. Here it is my activity:'''

In these texts, it is emphasised the importance to create a climate in the class that allows students to explore questions. But it is necessary that the teacher would be able to ask the right question at the right time, for this reason, it is important that teachers have clear the type of questions that exist and their classification to know when to use them depend on what the students need or want to know. Therefore, I am going to explain here the type of questions to use depend on the situation:

Productive questions:

Attention-focusing questions: starting with 'have you seen?' or 'do you notice?...' it is a way to catch our students attention to specific details that can  be unnoticed.

Measuring and counting questions: using 'how many?', 'how long?', 'how often?'...which allow students to check their answers.

Comparison questions: 'In how many ways does it differ from...?' is a typoe of question to use here as a way to make classifications and compare collected data.

Action questions: these are 'what happens if...?' they lead students to begin a scientific study and investigate their hypothesis in real situations.

Problem-posting questions: starting with ' can you find a way to...?' It is another way to take action and investigate the different possibilities.

Why and How questions:

Teachers' how and why questions: They are questions that ask for an explanation. It can be dangerous  because the lack of a model can make children feel afraid of saying something wrong. However, we have to make them see that there is no an unique way to answer. We could start using 'Why, do you think...?'

Children's how and why questions: Children usually ask 'why?', but as teacher what we don't have to do is to provide a vague answer, so using questions as 'What happens if....?' or 'let us see how...' are a way to make them use their experience to understand it.

Apart from knowing the type of questions that we can use, it is also important to when use them. Consequently, there are some steps that teachers could follow to create a good climate for inquiry:

Firstly, we have to create a cooperative climate in which students can collaborate between them to ask, share information and see other ways to answer the same question.

To create that climate whe should use Open-ended questions such 'why do you think...?' 'How can you explain...' which allow students to observe, reflect and evaluate

After that, we should use questions that allow students to look for evidences that suport their data, such as 'How do you know...?'

The following step would be to use productive questions that I explained before, to get more detailed information and students will be able to categorize their own questions depend on the way the collect this information ( by observation, experiments, reading, looking at data or speculating) and allow them to establish predictions.

Also, it is important that students understand how scientists work. A key could be ask them to think how a scientist is (curious, collaborative...) asking them questions that let them enter in the scientific world.

After knowing how to act as a scientist, students should plan their own investigations using why and how questions and allow them to establish hypotheses.

Consecutively, teachers have to show students how to collect accurate and useful data using  comparison, action and problem-posting questions. And also how to represent it (circle graphs, bar graphs, area graphs...)

The following step would be making sense of data. That is to connect their hypotheses with large ideas. In that point, teacher should ask them questions to reflect about their own data, looking for other factors, similarities and differences...

The last one would be to assess their own conclusions, using questions that allow pupils to do a critically review researh, using Why and How questions, such as 'Why did you choose...?' ' How did you decide...?'

In conclusion, it is important that teachers have clear how to guide their students through questions that allow them to achieve a significant learning for themselves.

Questions can also be divided in:
 * Factual questions: based on knowing about an specific knowledge or facts and are supported by evidences.


 * Conceptual questions: exploration of ideas that connect facts and topics. They encourage analysis.

Consequently, after developing  a deeply understanding about inquiry and focusing on my planner I am developing for this course, the questionsto guide understanding of the generalization are the following:
 * Debatable questions: use of facts to  debate about a topic. They promote discussion.

Factual questions:

+ How do we define culture?

+ What characteristics do you know about your culture? And about others?

+ What civic rules and values are necessary to live in society?

Conceptual questions:

+ What similarities and differences do you find between your culture and others?

+ How does our behaviour affects others?

+ Why are civic rules necessary to live in society?

Debatable questions:

+ What should be do to get a society based on respect and acceptance?

+ What happens if people don't accept others' differences?