Engaging Readers & Writers with Inquiry: Promoting Deep Understandings in Language Arts and the Content Areas with Guiding Questions

by Jeffrey D. Wilhelm

Book Overview

What makes a good relationship? How does flight influence behavior for humans and birds? Is it ever permissible to lie? Reframing our units and lessons with questions such as these makes learning more exciting for students. Wilhelm debunks the myth that teaching through inquiry is hard. He shares practical, easy ideas for turning state standards into engaging authentic questions that propel students toward deep understandings. Includes sample lessons,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0439574137
• ISBN13: 9780439574136
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: Scholastic Teaching Resources
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 7.4" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 9 to 18 years
• Grade Range: Grade 4 to Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

Great Resource for Teachers!

This is one of the best resources I've found. Wilhelm explains inquiry learning in great detail and gives many practical examples for using his methods in various content areas. I teach language arts and also work with students who have learning differences. I have been looking for research-based information that I can share with teachers in my school who seem to be stuck in a time warp. This book gives me everything I need. I highly recommend this one for any teacher (or parent) who wants to truly engage children!

An engaging read!

This book is a must for any teacher seeking to enliven their classrooms in a time where students are increasingly thinking, questioning and showing interest in the issues that affect their lives and the world around them. This book not only offers a myriad of practical examples of the inquiry process and how you can frame current ideas, concepts and understandings as inquiry; but it also provides the teacher with the intellectual rigor and confidence to create one's own inquiry based units - from front loading, to the scaffolding of learning through to culminating projects. This book encourages you to think, question and explore your own teaching practices, through references to the theory behind these ideas, and in doing so this text honors and respects the knowledge and ideas that you as a teacher already bring to the classroom. What it encourages teachers to do is to use instructional methods that will assist students in making connections, will allow them to present their voice and perspective on an issue and lead to the deeper understandings that will be long lasting and more meaningful and relevant for our students. It provides processes and strategies that mirror the learning that occurs in `the real world.' After all, is this not what we want of our students - to become life-long learners? Too many times, I have read books that claim to provide all of the answers. Such books present the so called `perfect lesson' along with a step by step guide of how to achieve this. I find these types of books to be both condescending and unrealistic. As all good teachers know, this is not how it works in real life. What gives Wilhelm so much credibility is the fact that he has taught through inquiry, he has used and adapted many of the ideas that he presents and he talks about what has worked for him in an honest and open fashion. One must build onto the ideas presented by others, apply and synthesize in a way that suits their own style of teaching and adapt to suit the needs of their learners. This book helps you as a teacher to fit all of the pieces to the puzzle together. Never dull, nor vague, Wilhelm provides us with a smart read and lays out the challenge ahead for us as educators. As a teacher for nine years who has had much success with inquiry based learning, I only wish that I had such a book when I first began teaching. Once again, a must read for all teachers. I thoroughly recommend Engaging Readers and Writers with Inquiry. Every teacher should have a copy.

Remember When Learning Was Fun?

When we were kids -- and this is true of both all teachers and all students -- we actually WANTED to learn. We asked questions galore. We were curious about things that interested us, and we were relentless in putting together the pieces or engaging the experts (Mom, Coach, the camp windsurfing counselor) necessary to get our answers. So, what happened to all that enthusiasm once the kid moved on to the classroom? Jeffrey Wilhelm (and the vast body of research he cites) has some answers in his new must-read-if-you're-a-teacher book, ENGAGING READERS & WRITERS WITH INQUIRY. Wilhelm's book is, hands down, one of the "meatiest" resources I've read. The initial chapters go over definitions and research to give you a foundation in inquiry's history and latest manifestations, but after that it is one practical strategy after another, each rich with examples from Wilhelm's own classes. The heart of the inquiry method is questioning. Wilhelm teaches us to build "inquiry units" by creating "guiding questions" that students are actually curious about and want to answer during the unit. He also shows how these open-ended questions should be constructed (tips and pitfalls are included) so that they relate not only to your educational goals, but to the kids' lives and our shared world. Here we are putting the "fascinated kid" back into the "formerly bored student." Once you have the question(s), you move to designing the final product(s), followed by the creation of all of those formative tasks (from simpler to more complex) used to get to that final product (this is known in educational circles as "backwards planning"). As you get into the heart of the book, Wilhelm offers an array of strategies, including secret prompts; walkarounds; entrance and exit tickets; and before, during, and after questions. He gets into questioning schemes that take students up the ladder of complexity. Some of the schemes involve mentoring the students so that THEY ultimately create schematic questions for each other. So if you think you really learn something by preparing materials to teach it, consider the benefits in teaching your KIDS to do this for each other, thanks to your modelling and mentoring. Among the questioning schemes Wilhelm covers are "The Questioning Circle," "ReQuest," and "QARs, or Question-Answer Relationships." Then he focuses on author-reader transactions by sharing two authorial reading strategies utilizing inquiry, one called "QtA, or Questioning the Author," and the other called "Hillock's Questioning Hierarchy," which is George Hillock's ladder of increasing complexity. Hillock's Questioning Hieraarchy does for reading what Bloom's Taxonomy does for education as a whole. If you're tearing your hair out trying to get kids to grow more adept at literary analysis, you've hit paydirt at last. In the final chapter, Wilhelm demonstrates how all of these inquiry-based strategies can be used across the disciplines. He provides examples

Wonderful!

Another great book by Jeff Wilhelm. A comprehensive book that outlines how teachers can easily engage students with guided questions using inquiry. Very practical resource that will move students from surface knowledge to meaningful and relevant understanding. Will work in all content areas.

Engaging Readers & Writers with Inquiry

I am astonished by what I am learning reading this book. Being a teacher, I now have many more pathways to engage my students and help them comprehend the information they will sorely need to succeed in their future.