Janie's+Inquiry+Activity

​Janie Villella


 * __Janie's Inquiry Activity__**


 * __Activity: Literary Elements Mapping__**

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1) This activity would be a wonderful activity for high school literature students. The student controls everything in this activity. It begins with the student choosing their own title for the project. Then the activity goes on to the mapping of the characteristics of the specific character they have chosen. Once they have chosen a character, the mapping then asks specifics including the physical characteristics, how the character acts, and how other characters react to this character. Then the activity moves on to the conflict map where the student will describe the conflicts of their chosen character. In this section the student firsts describes the conflict, then why the conflict occurs, and finally, what are some ways the conflict could be resolved. The next map is the resolution map. Here the students describe how the conflict is resolved, the actions that occur once the conflict is over, and how does the conflict and resolution affect the character. Finally, the students have a settings map where they describe everything about the asthetics of the literature. Once the activity is completed the students have the opportunity to go back and edit and finally print the entire activity.

2a) NYS Standards
 * Standard 1: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for information and understanding
 * Standard 3: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for critical analysis and evaluation

2b) National Education Technology Standards
 * Standard 4: Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making
 * Standard 6: Technology Operations and Concepts

3) New Definition of Inquiry & Rubric

**Inquiry –** Inquiry learning is an educational process based on students’ natural curiosity. It is a form of active learning, where students develop a question of interest and work together, using higher level thinking. In inquiry learning, the teacher’s role is to help students develop the strategies it takes to solve the problem or answer the question, unlike other educational processes where the teacher is communicating the knowledge instead of having the students discover it on their own. By using inquiry learning, students will learn independent thinking, problem solving, multiple ways of doing research, better communication skills, and team work.

Jane- I think that this is a fantastic inquiry activity on several levels. First, I particularly like that the students are forced to be creative in creating their own characters. In order to do this, they must synthesize the material taught to them about characterization, conflict, etc. If everything you described in this activity is accurate, then I believe the WHOLE activity is inquiry based. There is no recall which I believe is seen in mine and Brian's activities through the multiple choice questions. However, were the students taught conflict and characterization via this site or do we assume that they were taught this unit in class? I think we should use your rubric on the Group Activity Page. --JeanMarie
 * || **Not Evident**
 * 0** || **Partial**
 * 1** || **Exemplary**
 * 2** || **Score** ||
 * The activity used team work to solve problems. || Although the students were divided into groups, most were working independently. || Some team work was used during certain parts of the process, but not throughout the entire activity. || Team Work was used throughout the activity. ||  ||
 * The activity required students to developed their own questions. || Each group had the same problem/question to solve/answer. Nothing was individualized. || Each team had their own questions, but they were all very similar and not creative. || Each group had their own, individualized questions. ||  ||
 * Multiple Forms of Research were required. || Students only used their text books, and anything that was available in the classroom. || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Students did use resources from the Internet, but only used 1 or 2. And very little diversity in the resources. || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Each team used multiple resources including the Internet, textbooks, articles, journals, etc. ||  ||
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The task involved students developing their own strategies for problem solving. || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Each group only used the textbook to solve their problem, and no creative ways to solve the problem were evident. || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The teams did come up with individualized strategies, but used the same one throughout the project. || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Each team had to use a different strategy for each issue, and no strategy could be used more than once. ||  ||
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Students solve problems using higher level thinking. || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The task only requires information gathering, which only requires lower level thinking. || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Students are given a task that requires some higher level thinking, but still contains some tasks that require only lower level. || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Task requires synthesis of information and application to a real-life situation. ||  ||

Janie - This activity was one of three I was tossing and turning on last week, but in the end I wish I had chosen this one. I don't why I talked myself out of it. I did the activity and had lots of fun creating the character, setting, problem and solution. There were infinite possibilities, which would make it just as fun if someone were to do it a second and third time. This activity accurately portrays inquiry-based learning and its components. It's certainly possible that conflict and characterization could have been taught beforehand, but in the end, the student has all the power and he or she could certainly expand on what the teacher said or even put a different spin on it. Great job on this! Brian