Tomorrow's Presentation

Tomorrow at the RRVWP, my reading group has to give a 45 minute presentation tomorrow. This time for the RRVWP, they tweaked their format some. The National Writing Project wants their summer institutes to involve some sort of professional reading. In the past we had to read an article or part of a book and present on that. Instead of having each individual participant give either a 'poster' talk or 'book' talk, at the beginning of this summer session the directors gave us a survey based off our reactions to the "Writing Next" report. In it they offer 12 suggestions for improving the teaching of writing. So we were grouped based on which one of the 12 categories we were most interested in.

I was in with the group interested in the topic of "Inquiry."

So we read Jeffrey Wilhelm's text "Engaging Readers and Writing with Inquiry." Now we have to give our report back to the rest of the participants.

This was a new concept to me. Basically, inquiry involves, at least according to Wilhelm, starting a unit with the big idea(s) right away rather than the small details. Wilhelm refers to this as top-down learning. In the book, he gives an example how a science teacher should not start with the molecule. Rather he should start with the human body and work his way down to the molecule.

In addition, inquiry is based on having an essential question(s) which guides an entire unit or lesson. This large question is then discussed and reduced to several smaller guiding questions. This part of how the teacher works backwards from the big idea to several smaller, personally relevant ideas.

To stick with the science example, an essential question to get at molecules would be "Is Sex Even Necessary?" First, that would trigger quite a bit of discussion. Certainly, few kids would be bored with that topic. They probably wouldn't be excited to discuss the molecule quite like that.

Then once you have gone through a series of inquiry based activities, which take the student from a broad topic to several guiding questions and activities - all of which try to show the student how personally relevant the material is to them - the whole unit ends in a culminating activity or project that the students work on on their own and apply what they have learned to their lives.

After reading and discussing this book for the better part of three weeks, I like a lot of what Wilhelm has to say. And in fact, I think I do take this approach. Though I am not very successful with it. One key point of inquiry is to push the students to take the reins of their learning and to do it on their own. I stink at this. My discussions are disasters. As are my lectures. The students don't step up to the plate there. Once a silence ensues, I cave and lead them to the answer I want them to have. This is not inquiry. This is the kind of shitty teaching that has gone on far too long.

But there is hope. In my Comp classes, I stay the hell out of their way as much as possible and let them take the reins. This works quite well for them. (a side note - for my demo earlier this summer, I dug through the stacks of writing portfolios I have my students turn in at the end of every Comp class. And I have to admit - I had some great writers. Now how much I had to do with that is negligible. I just gave them the time to write and I came up with ways to try and get them to find their voices and asked them to work hard. And they produced some great, great things.)

I just need to find a way to take that attitude and those methods and inculcate (now there's a word I haven't used since my undergraduate days) them into my other classes.

Tomorrow our group will - hopefully - model an actual discussion of our reading using the inquiry - top-down - approach.

Here is the plan -

We will begin with a guiding question (only it will be a writing prompt too) - "What was a time in recent memory when you experienced happiness?" Wilhelm refers to the Russian psychologist who is famous for his work on "flow." So we are going to use the guiding question as a front-loading activity as well.

It will be my job to listen to their responses and try to sift through them for ideas as to how I can connect their personal experiences with the concept of 'flow.' (Wilhelm believes only when students engage in flow - basically being engaged in a personally meaningful type of work to the point where one loses track of time (kind of like when I blog or write, work on a decorating project with Kristie, put Legos together with KoKo, or teach and coach)are they able to truly invest themselves in their work and derive personal meaning from it and really learn something, which is what inquiry is really all about) I am really looking forward to this challenge. Of course, it could backfire and really bomb on us, but Wilhelm says inquiry is not without its risks. So we shall see.

Hopefully, I'll be able to find a few 'hooks' in the others' responses where I can then start to delineate (another undergrad word) some ideas for guiding questions. Once that is done, so is my brief role in our presentation, and I can get the hell out of the way.

After the folks in charge of the guiding question(s) segment is over, we will end with a culminating activity in which we ask the participants to - in groups according to grade level - see if they can't find one or two ways in which they can incorporate either inquiry or flow into their curriculum.

I'll let you know tomorrow how it turns out!