Skating Backwards on Thin Ice: Inquiry in the Writing Classroom

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Skating Backwards on Thin Ice Inquiry in the
Writing Classroom

• Houston
• April 16, 2005

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Inquiry-based First Year

• The experience of most undergraduatesis that of
  receiving what is served out to them. In one
  course after another they listen, transcribe,
  absorb, and repeat, essentially as undergraduates
  have done for centuries. The idea embodied in
  this report would turn the prevailing culture of
  receivers into a culture of inquirers, a culture
  in which faculty, graduate students, and
  undergraduates share an adventure of
  discoveryThe first year university experience
  needs to provide new stimulation for intellectual
  growth and a firm grounding in inquiry-based
  learning.
• The Boyer Commission Report, 1998

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Why Inquiry?

• Essential acts of mind that are present in the
  first assignment to the last (Ann Berthoff)
• Transferable to other disciplines, and other
  writing situations.
• Fits with process approach
• Curiosity Need to know or want to know
  invests learner with motivation and
  responsibility for learning
• Creates conditions for discovery

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Elements of Inquiry-based Learning

• Create atmosphere of mutual inquiry
• Emphasize questions before answers
• Encourage willingness to suspend judgment,
  tolerate ambiguity
• Introduce a strategy of inquiry
• Investigate in a rhetorical context

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Fastwrite Exercise

• Imagine a room you spent a lot of time in as a
  child. Put yourself back there.
• Drawing on all of your senses, fastwrite for
  seven minutes, beginning with that room. What do
  you see, what do you hear, what do you smell,
  what do you feel? Write in present tense.
• Skip a line. Compose a fat paragraph, beginning
  with this line What I understand now about this
  time in my life that I didnt understand then was

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Strategy for Inquiry
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Strategy for Inquiry

• Creative Thinking
• Sea
• Fastwriting
• Showing
• Specifics
• Collecting
• Observations of
• What happened
• Then
• Generating
• Exploring
• Seeing
• Playing

• Critical Thinking
• Mountain
• Composing
• Telling
• Generalities
• Focusing
• Ideas about
• What happens
• Now
• Criticizing
• Reflecting
• Interpreting
• Judging

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From Sea to Mountain Applying Inquiry Strategy
to Facts

• Percentage of Palestinians in refugee camps who
  say that given a choice they would live nowhere
  but Israel 10
• Percentage (of Palestinians in refugee camps)
  who say they would accept compensation and homes
  in a Palestinian state 54
• Percentage of Jewish settlers in the West Bank
  and Gaza who say they would relocate if
  compensated 83

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Strategy for Inquiry
Suspending Judgments
Exploring Explaining Evaluating Reflecting
Collecting Data
Making Judgments
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Making Knowledge Through Conversation

• Models knowledge-making
• Writing in the middle
• Colonizing text with writers intentions
• Using authority of voice
• Suspending judgment, tolerating ambiguity

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Inquiry as Conversation

• Peter Sacks I would encounter this look and The
  Attitude often. It was a look of utter
  disengagement. At first, I was confused and
  bewildered by it and thought there must be
  something terribly wrong with me and the way I
  taught. But ever after I began to strategically
  adapt to my situation, I would continue to get
  Those Looks accompanied by The Attitude. And I
  eventually would conclude that I was a good
  teacher, that it wasnt me who was the problem
  but a culture of young people who were born and
  bred to sit back and enjoy the spectacle that
  engulfed them.

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Inquiry as Conversation

• Peter Sacks They seemed to resent that I
  obviously couldnt measure up to the standards
  for amusement that they learned on Sesame Street
  in their formative years, standards later
  reinforced by Beverly Hills 90210, Cosmopolitan,
  Nirvana, and Pearl Jam. Whats more, they were
  conditioned by an overly nurturing, hand-holding
  educational system not to take responsibility for
  their own actions. But until I began to
  accurately assess my new environment, I often
  reacted with a visible irritation to such scenes
  as bored guys with backwards baseball caps.

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Inquiry as Conversation

• Peter Sacks I would learn that this was a
  classic case of people who could dish it out, but
  who couldnt take it and the trouble for me was
  that these young people collectively held a great
  deal of power in this place, a rather key point
  that I didnt fully comprehend at first. Until I
  understood this, my relationship with some of my
  classes developed at times into all out war.

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Dialogue (Double-entry) Journal

• Voice of Source
• Quoted passages
• Summaries of key ideas
• Paraphrases
• Surprising facts
• Questions

• Voice of Student
• Believing
• Doubting
• Questions
• Connecting
• Updating
• Interpreting
• Exploring, Explaining, Evaluating, Reflecting

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Margarets Journal

• Step One The Believing Game
• Remember that movie The Burbs, starring Corey
  Feldman, among others? His character was
  particularly amusing, and significant for this
  discussion, because rather than watching cable,
  he found his neighborhood drama so fascinating
  that he invited friends over to watch the
  spectacle. I remember my dad saying something
  like, The Tv generationeverything is
  entertainment to them! At one point in the
  film, when all mayhem is breaking loose, the
  police are showing up, and Tom Hanks and his pals
  have burned down their serial killer neighbors
  home, Feldman erupts with glee and shouts, The
  Pizza Dude is here! I thought of him while
  reading this essay, because my generation is
  pretty entertainment oriented. Maybe video games
  and unlimited TV have turned us all into passive
  morons

• Step Two The Doubting Game
• Okay, give me a breakthis man is convinced that
  he is a fabulous teacher, yet many of his classes
  have evolved into an all out war? One has to
  wonder what his definition of a good teacher is,
  then. He comes off like a whiny, overly
  sensitive person who after discovering that he is
  an ineffective teacher chooses to blame it on his
  students rather than consider that he might be a
  crucial part of the problem. He never discussed
  how he tried to reach his students or whether he
  altered his teaching methods, besides
  compromising his high standards. I have had
  plenty of demanding teachers in college, and
  while many students bitch and moan about the
  workload and the difficulty, I have found that a
  majority of students thrive on high
  expectationsFor this reason I serious doubt his
  claim that he is a good teacher.

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What is a researchable question?
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Exploring What do you notice first? And then?
And then?
Explaining What story is this trying to tell and
how does it tell it?
Evaluating Do you believe the story this is
trying to tell? Is it convincing? What other
readings would you offer?
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Ways of Inquiring Reflecting

• What do I notice about how I think about or do
  this?
• How do I compare how I approach this task with
  how I approach another one?
• What are the patterns of thinking or doing that I
  usually follow when I do this? Did those
  patterns change at all?
• How do I feel about my performance? How might I
  do this differently next time?

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Gen X Goes to College by Peter Sacks

• I would encounter this look and The Attitude
  often. It was a look of utter disengagement. At
  first, I was confused and bewildered by it and
  thought there must be something terribly wrong
  with me and the way I taught. But ever after I
  began to strategically adapt to my situation, I
  would continue to get Those Looks accompanied by
  The Attitude. And I eventually would conclude
  that I was a good teacher, that it wasnt me who
  was the problem but a culture of young people who
  were born and bred to sit back and enjoy the
  spectacle that engulfed them. They seemed to
  resent that I obviously couldnt measure up to
  the standards for amusement that they learned on
  Sesame Street in their formative years, standards
  later reinforced by Beverly Hills 90210,
  Cosmopolitan, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam. Whats
  more, they were conditioned by an overly
  nurturing, hand-holding educational system not to
  take responsibility for their own actions. But
  until I began to accurately assess my new
  environment, I often reacted with a visible
  irritation to such scenes as bored guys with
  backwards baseball caps. I would learn that this
  was a classic case of people who could dish it
  out, but who couldnt take it and the trouble
  for me was that these young people collectively
  held a great deal of power in this place, a
  rather key point that I didnt fully comprehend
  at first. Until I understood this, my
  relationship with some of my classes developed at
  times into all out war.

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Reading in Alien Territory Collecting

• Purpose What do you think is interesting,
  relevant, or significant about Nobles argument?
• STEP ONE. Read the excerpt. As you do, use the
  double-entry journal technique to collect lines
  or passages from Nobles text that you find
  significant, interesting, or puzzling. Carefully
  copy these on the left page of your journal.
  Consider reading the excerpt once through without
  taking notes and begin collecting in your journal
  during the second or third reading.

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Reading in Alien Territory Exploring

• When you feel satisfied youve collected enough,
  use the lines or passages youve gathered on the
  left page as prompts for fastwriting on the
  right. When the writing stalls, skip a line,
  look to the left, and find something else to
  jumpstart your writing. When you can, write
  about your own observations and experiences with
  technology that might help you think about what
  Noble is trying to say. Tell stories. Remember,
  questions, not answers, should direct your
  fastwriting. Keep writing until you feel you have
  a grip on some of what Noble seems to be saying
  about technology and your own response to his
  ideas.

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Reading in Alien Territory Evaluating

• Adopt a critical mode of thinking for a moment.
  Use the writing and information youve collected
  so far, and compose a paragraph response that
  summarizes, in your own words, Nobles argument
  and offers your own response to it. This
  response should complete the following sentence
  Based on your understanding, the most significant
  thing Noble has to say is

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Ways of Inquiring Exploring

• What does this mean to me, or how do I think or
  feel about it?
• What do I notice first? And then what? And
  then?
• What interests me most about this? What
  additional questions does it raise?
• How do my own experiences affect the way I feel
  and what I see?

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(No Transcript)
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Ways of Inquiring Explaining

• How does this work? Why does it work?
• How does this clarify things?
• What does it tell us?
• What do I understand this to be saying?
• What story is this trying to tell and how does it
  tell it? (Images)

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Ways of Inquiring Evaluating

• Whats my take on this?
• Do I see this the way most other people do?
• All things considered, whats most convincing
  here? Whats least convincing?
• What do I see that supports what I believe?
• What do I see that complicates or contradicts
  what I believe?
• Do I believe the story this is trying to tell?
  (Images)