Directed and Open Ended Discussions – Inquiry Teaching

Team Building – Survival Test Role Play

Drew Story — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 00:05:20 +0000

This lesson provides students with an opportunity to role play two different survival tests; one being lost on the moon, the other surviving a plane crash in the desert. (We liked to use one test for one grade, and the other for another grade level.) Students attempt to rank a list of items individually, then within a team.

The ranking of these lists are then scored against an experts ranking. Teachers may then use the individual and team scoring for discussing the strengths (or weaknesses) they found in their respective teams. Good teams listen to everyone’s ideas and will (nearly) always score better than an individual alone.

These role plays are always a big hit and fun lessons for students.

Subject Areas: Any
Materials Required: Copies of handouts in packet (or means of displaying them), paper for students.
Time Needed: Typically an entire class period.

Writing Prompts – Learning Logs

Drew Story — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 15:27:15 +0000

We like to begin or end a lesson with a simple writing prompt. If at the end of the lesson, often the prompt was “What was learned today?” Having students focus their thoughts and put them into written words always aids retention and the follow up discussions were insightful and sometimes led to entire other lessons. We would refer to these writings as “Learning Logs.”

This list of over 80 writing prompts will also help stimulate lesson ideas for you. Please consider downloading our free Teacher’s Guide to Open Ended Discussions, too. It pairs well with this list.

Subject Areas: ALL, but many fit best with Social Studies
Materials Required: Optional, but a display of the prompt is helpful.
Time Needed: 15-20 minutes usually.

The Flowers of Guatemala

Drew Story — Thu, 31 Aug 2017 03:50:32 +0000

This lesson uses the song and lyrics from R.E.M.’s “The Flowers of Guatemala” from their Life’s Rich Pageant” album to teach students about making deductive inferences and the limitations of using the Scientific Method with the Social Sciences.

Deduction uses only logic to explain an outcome when all other possibilities have been examined. Instead of this, social scientists must use deductive inference which is a conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning alone. Much of our study of history is based on inferences with incomplete facts. Even our understanding of recent history can be made more clear in the future as more information is revealed or discovered through diaries, additional eye witness accounts, and other records.

This lesson includes complete procedures and directions and generally runs for an entire class period.

Follow up this lesson with our role play and writing assignment lesson “Atlantis.”

Subject Areas: History, Humanities
Materials Required: Soap, water, small clear dish, whiteboard or display, song “The Flowers of Guatemala,” and its lyrics.
Time Needed: 30 – 40 minutes

Teaching Guide for Open Ended Discussions

Drew Story — Thu, 31 Aug 2017 03:44:24 +0000

Most teachers are well versed in handling directed discussions where students are asked questions and guided to a particular conclusion. Open ended discussions where there might be no single “right” answer are a very different kind of discussion, and much harder to do well.

Creating a successful open ended discussion takes planning. This free teaching guide will provide you with direction and guidance on how to use this teaching strategy to motivate and stir interest in for any topic in your classes. Open ended discussions are a great way to start a new unit, too, as a means of learning what background knowledge your students may already possess on a given topic.

A few sample lesson ideas are included in this guide in addition to details about how to create your own.

Subject Area: Any
Materials Required: Whiteboard or display
Time Needed: Can be an entire class period or only an introduction item.

Connecting Past to Present: The Fall of Rome

Drew Story — Sat, 19 Aug 2017 18:23:09 +0000

Free! This lesson is a comparison of problems in our time with those of the Roman’s coupled with an analysis of the fall of the Roman Empire. The lesson provides prompts and questions intended to be used with either a classroom dialogue, writing activity or in combination of these things. This lesson is intended for World History and Humanities classes and works best as a closure activity to the study of the fall of the Roman Empire.

You may wish to also download our free Teaching Guide for Open Ended Discussions.

Subject Areas: Social Sciences, Sciences, Humanities, Government
Materials Required: Optional – whiteboard or display for posting prompts
Time Needed: Typically an entire class period