Group Inquiry

Group Inquiry Strategies to Support Learning

To promote student discussions, procedural and conceptual knowledge exploration, reading discussions, and connection of ideas, a variety of groupings within the classroom are important.  These different group structures allow students to participate in a democratic classroom, and participate in different roles within a group as well as be efficient in the social learning setting.

Knowing the purpose of the grouping helps teachers to establish effective learning communities and to develop leadership qualities for each group member.  Regular assigned groups such as writing groups or literature circles should be changed on a regular basis.  Through an inquiry approach, students will usually move from group to group within a class period setting.

Randomly assigning groupings can also be done occasionally to group quickly while still involving community building among the students.  Examples for random group assignments include:

• Person next to you
• Coloured popsicle sticks handed out at the door
• Matching buttons or blocks – given out at the door
• Number off
• Out of the hat
• Puzzle pieces to form your group – each person gets a puzzle piece
• Question and answer to jokes
• Choosing one partner and then pairing up with another partner by the teacher (allows for some student choice)

Strategies for grouping to support learning include:

Jigsaw Reading

·        Useful for grouping students for discussion and reading strategy

·        Home groups are established

·        Key idea is that the individual members of the home group are responsible and accountable for sharing the level of knowledge and understanding that the home group will develop

·        Each individual member of the home group then numbers off and forms an expert group with other members of the class that share the same number so that they bring different areas of expertise to a new group

o       Students form home groups of 4 or 5 students each

o       Students in the home group number off:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5

o       All 1’s form an expert group, so do all 2’s, 3’s, etc.

o       Each expert group is given a topic, section of text, part of a problem or task to complete; each expert group must fully understand their assignment and be able to teach it to their home group; expert groups plan how to teach their material to their home groups using a placemat, may display their information on paper or take their co-operative group on a gallery tour

o       All students return to their home group – each will share what they learned in the expert group

Gallery Walk

·        Useful way to have students share their ideas and work, get responses to these, see patterns across other students’ work and responses, and provide the stimulation for both formal and informal discussions

o       Small groups of students create a visible response (i.e. picture map, thinking chart, Venn diagram, chart paper) to a question or a problem

o       Students post their work

o       Students count off by 1’s and 2’s then give half of the students time to walk around the ‘gallery of work’ and listen to the ‘presenters’ who stayed with their work to talk about what they have done

o       An informal discussion can then ensue either between presenter and visitor or as a larger group once everyone has seen all the work presentations

o       As a group, students can begin to look for commonalities, differences, themes, and new questions to pursue forming the basis for a whole class discussion

Placemat

·        Useful way of giving each student the opportunity to track the thinking and discussion in each group or at different station on a gallery walk

o       Once back in their original groups, students can convey information and create a summary in the centre of the placemat

o       All of the processes are important in synthesizing and organizing information

Carousel Seating

·        Useful to engage students in a discussion about the inquiry topic and/or assigned reading and can could also be used for community building

o       Have a prompt or question for students to discuss

o       Students sit in two concentric circles:  the inner circle turns out to face the outer circle, who face in

o       When time is called, the outer circle move around one position and each student then has a new discussion partner to share ideas and elaborate with

Inside/Outside Circles

·        Useful strategy to pair and group students for discussion purposes

o       The inside circle (seated) engage in a discussion while the outside circle (standing) observe

o       Each outside circle student evaluates the participation of the participant directly in front of them and those sitting on either side using an evaluation sheet with the column headings:  student name, added new insight, specific reference to the text being discussed, attentive listening behaviours, appreciation of others

o       Circle places are then flipped so that each student has the opportunity to either be in the discussion or observation circle

Silent Discussion Thread

·        Useful to facilitate silent discussion (reading and writing), pursued by a verbal discussion, based on what the group has written

o       Organize the class into groups and provide each student with a piece of paper with a question written on the top of the sheet (approximately five questions, i.e. what makes a speech powerful?  What language devices can be used?  What is the purpose of a speech?  How can a speech influence the audience?)

o       After time is called, each student passes the paper to his/her left and the next student responds

o       No one talks

o       After everyone in the group has responded, small group or whole class discussion can ensue

Round Robins and Anchor Charts

·        Useful in helping students to quickly brainstorm when beginning a study unit, as a reflection or a discussion technique on what has just been read or learned

·        Anchor charts make classroom knowledge visible

o       Teacher provides several anchor charts with different headings that designate topics or ideas related to the inquiry problem or task at hand

o       Student groups have two minutes to put as much information as possible on the chart

o       When time is called, each group moves and adds new material to the new chart

Boxing

• Useful for helping teachers track the students’ thinking by having them initial their responses
• Useful in facilitating students to create meaning through writing questions and answers with partners or small groups in order to explore topics

o       Students read a question framed within a box enclosed within two or three other boxes

o       Students can write questions inside a box and then pass to another group who answer and/or ask new questions in the next outer layer of the box

SWOT Analysis

• Useful template (a quartered square) that allows students divided into groups to discuss the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats/hazards regarding a particular issue, proposal, situation, character, or of an explanation revealed in a particular reading

o       To be discussed in pairs or groups and then shared as a class

Wilhelm, Jeffrey D., Peggy Jo Wilhelm, and Erika Boas.  Inquiring Minds Learn to Read and Write:  50 Problem-based Literacy & Learning Strategies.  Toronto:  Rubicon Publishing Inc., 2009.