September began with a dramatic trip to a nearby bog. The adult guides questions were most often of the attention-focusing type: "Did you notice...? Have you seen...?" Back in the classroom, the students wrote fast and furiously in their science journals and talked about what they had observed. Individually they brainstormed lists of questions that piqued their interests. Each student settled upon the question which grabbed his or her interest the most. At this point, students began appearing in the library, notebooks clutched in hand and I had visions of settling into conferencing sessions which would illuminate areas covering both content and process. The conference methods the teacher and I had decided upon were:
- The beginning conference would help students frame questions and work out two or three simple search strategies to locate what they wished to know. Students would arrive in groups of two or three although they worked alone and not in cooperative groupings. I kept a brief running log of observations.
- An "informal" conference with a formative focus would be held at any necessary point during the research in order to guide students. The summative assessment component consisted of writing observations on the form above.
- At the end point, students would have a formal conference with me. For this they were expected to prepare their thoughts on this type of process and what they learned about research.
In the beginning, most of the questions required simplistic answers. ("How many plants are there in a bog?" "What is the smallest bog in Maine?") The students probably figured that they could write "10" or "Little Caribou bog" or some such short answer and be done with it. It first occurred to me that the teacher should restrict the questions to ones that did not expect a simple short answer. However, she disagreed and insisted that any question that child selected was to be honored as being something that he or she really wanted to know. Later, I was glad that I was overruled. It provided a wonderful opportunity to shift the responsibility of the research back to the students' shoulders. Especially in the beginning, some children seemed to feel that it was my to job to find their answers. Towards the end, it was also clear that it took a while for the students to change their concept of "asking questions." It should be no surprise that students accustomed to filling-in-the- blank or finding a short answer assume thatÍs the type of question you are "supposed" to ask. The key of course, is engaging the students in the topic: that's lighting the fire.
During the beginning conference, both the student and I would examine their question with an eye toward research strategies. Does the question expect a simple answer; would one source be "good enough" or should two sources be required to substantiate each other? So a question such as "How many amphibians are there in a bog?" required the student to think about the difference between individual animals and species types. In order to answer their questions, they had to devise methods of finding out, elevating the process beyond a mere writing down of a final and finite number.
I was brought to an abrupt halt by one girl's question: "How do scientists know there is water under a bog?" This is not something easily found by using an index or performing a CD-Rom word search on "bog." Just for a moment, I felt unmasked; I had no quick and dirty tricks up my sleeve to provide assistance. So I did what felt right, sat down at a table, made eye contact with the girl and asked her to tell me more about her question. She explained that the guide informed the class about the physiology of bogs but didn't give the details on how the water table was known. She wanted to know the scientific method by which it was discovered; why should she take their word if the method was suspect? So we talked for a while about possible methods of water detecting and then about scientific deduction. This brief conference lead us to examine a book about geologists and a photograph of scientists extracting a long core sample of earth. "Reading" this picture (not studying the caption) produced a small "A-ha" from the girl. "So that's how they can figure out what is under the surface of the earth!" I made a note on my conference log that she was truly thinking about what she saw on the field trip and using an analytic process to work through her question. I highlight this simple incident because I felt it was a watershed in my own development as an educator. Intellectually I always knew that I didn't need to have the answers but for the first time "working the process" felt right.
During the rest of the year this class continued their research on other Maine eco-systems. At various intervals I sat with most of the students for a final conference in which we discussed this inquiry method of research. Problems they encountered usually dealt with the amount of material they needed to sift through and the "work" needed to extract an "answer" to their questions. One student mentioned that the hardest part was getting started. The element that students liked the best was that they could select their own questions and "learned a lot!" When asked which resource was the best, one boy replied, Children's Britannica, because "it didn't give me the answer but led me to it."
More than once a conference included a discussion of why it was completely acceptable to work on an "answer" that wasn't clean and definitive. Quibbling among experts makes researching even more interesting. During some of these science conferences, we actually worked on designing experiments that might lead to a firmer grasping of the concepts. For example, the bog guide had compared the upper peat layer to a "sponge." One student wished to know how much weight it would hold. This actually was a pressing question for him all through the field trip! So he designed an experiment that involved weighing a sponge, floating it and seeing how much on its own weight it would hold. This hands-on test was followed up with a phone call to the guide.
The final part of this unit was to convey what they had learned with a Hypercard stack. Students added cards for each science topic they worked on. (Some added questions and answers from their readings and a other field trips). Throughout the year, I showed the class other student-made stacks and then they discussed what they liked and didn't like, what worked well and what didn't about each. Together we made a class list of the attributes that they decided were important for an excellent stack. At the end of the year, each student self-assessed using found three other classmates' stacks to read, manipulate and evaluate. It was acceptable for the student to say that they liked it but the "critics" were required to support their opinions with facts that either they developed from that specific stack or from the attribute list. I gave students formative feedback also. Once this class was videotaped as they worked on their stacks after a mini-lesson. The most overwhelmingly important observation I had was how on-target everyone was! For an educator reflecting on how well the class went, too often the memory of a class centers around all the problems, glitches and whiners. It was gratifying to see how hard these students were working.
We had all come through this year with the sense of journeying. Most questions posed to students shouldn't always have straight-forward answers. By giving students the concept that questions can be problems to be illuminated with further investigation, we can be teaching scientific problem solving and a thirst for learning. I feel that I made some small personal inroads into using the conferencing technique. Next time, I will insist on the originally decided number of researchers: two or three at a time. Too often, this segment of the project was squeezed to a minimum amount of time and therefore the library was swamped with too many students to make conferencing a meaningful experience. Also, more sessions would be audio or videotaped for further evaluation.
The final conferences where somewhat of a disappoint to me. Students were not able to pull forth many metacognitive aspects of their research experiences. Because the project was prolonged, students appeared not to remember what was happening with their learning early in the school year. Therefore other pieces of the assessment puzzle needed to be called into service. For instance conferencing over a long term needs to be supported with a learning log or a journal. It would be a natural extension to evaluate similar activities early on in the following next year to look for and stress continuity and transferability. It was also later that I developed the "Conference with Yourself" list of preparatory questions to assist students in articulating their learning. It is only fair to students to inform them (or to assist in the development, if they are old enough) of the criteria for inquiry type projects. For example, this scoring guide is based on a workshop given by Grant Wiggins.
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