Group+Inquiry+Page

4) Chosing an inquiry based activity in the language arts is extremely difficult, but I felt that we all did a really great job of thinking outside the box and finding activities that are all at least partially inquiry based. JeanMarie's activity involved inquiry by allowing the students to choose the writing style they wish to study and then asks higher order thinking questions. Brian's activity involved students deciding on the appropriate passages to summarize the story. And mine has the students making every decision and controlling the activity with their own ideas and creating a story from their own knowledge.
 * __Janie Villella__**

5) Unfortunately, many of the activities for language arts inquiry activities involve recalling information which technically is not inquiry. Unlike Brian and JeanMarie, I actually believe that all three of our activities were slightly not inquiry based on this factor. In Brian's activity the students must recall information from the story on the website. JeanMarie's also involves recall to complete the assignment, and to even attempt my activity the student must recall information they have learned from their literature.

6) Since my teammates have decided that possibly my rubric would be the most appropriate to use, I would like to suggest some collaboration. My rubric does evaluate the activity and not the students, which is a requirement, but I really enjoyed different parts of each rubric. In Brian's rubric he uses "synthesizing" as a requirement which I think is perfect for inquiry because it is challenging the students to create their own new knowledge. And in JeanMarie's rubric she uses "discovery" as a requirement where the students not only create new knowledge, but new ways of using that knowledge. I think that the best rubric, would be a collaboration of the three.

Jane: I'm not sure if we should add comments to each other's postings in the way I am doing this now, but I think it may be a good idea because it will help us as we collaborate further. (Plus, we can delete these as we go on.) I did want to comment that I agree we should all take snippets of each of the three rubrics in making a new one. ---JeanMarie

(4) I think that each of the activities presented by the group members in this Group Wiki are inquiry based. Brian's activity is inquiry based because the students take what they have learned from the website (Main Ideas and Details in speaking and writing) and have to apply it to further understanding through reading/listening to phone conversation, directions, etc. Similarly, my activity is inquiry based because the student must decipher tex types through higlighting vital information in the texts and answering higher order questions. Jane's activitiy is without a doubt inquiry based because it asks the students to use their creativity in learning about characterization and conflict. The students are not only learning about conflict and characterization but creating a story to show how well they understand the material.
 * __JeanMarie Dimitratos__**

(5) My activity is inquiry based but also focuses on recall and is therefore not solely inquiry based. Much like the format of my activity, Brian's also includes recall which strays away from true inquiry. Our activities both include the students to answer multiple choice questions--which to me are not inquiry based. However, as the questions continue, they become more analytical and thought-provoking. (6) I think Jane's rubric is the best evaluation to use for inquiry based due to the fact she incorporates all elements of true inquiry bsaed learning. Her rubric covers all aspects of the learning process in all three of these activities. However, I think that group evaluation is not applicable in the nature of the activities the three of us chose and we may need to change that component of the rubric.

__**Brian Kacharaba**__

4. I agree with JeanMarie in that all of our activities were inquiry based. JaneMarie's and my activities were similar because it required students to read text and synthesize the information in order to answer the questions. In our cases, students can form a connection between text passages and other resources with their every-day activities. Ironically, Janie's activity was one of three I was contemplating before finally settling on mine. That is definitely inquiry-based because the students have to be creative in choosing a character, setting and conflict. Everything is done through the mind of the student and there is no recall involved, while there was some with mine and JeanMarie's. Janie's was probably the most fun to do too because there were infinite possibilities and original thinking each time the project was done so I'm starting to regret not choosing that one.

5. As I mentioned in No. 4, I felt all three were inquiry-based but on different levels. My and JaneMarie's required some recall, but the questions did become more challenging as it went along and high-level thinking was needed. Janie's was probably the best at tackling the true definition of inquiry-based learning because of what that project entailed.

6. I also think Jane's rubric is the best of the three. Each portion of inquiry-based learning was present, including group work, questioning, different research methods, problem solving and high-level thinking. I will respectfully disagree with JeanMarie about group evaluation not being applicable to inquiry-based learning because sometimes your peers could be instrumental in the problem-solving process. In fact, inquiry-based learning works just as well in collaborative learning as it does individually, just as long as the whole group is passionate about the question. In my and JaneMarie's activities, the group can arrive at a consensus at the right multiple choice answer. I mentioned before that I got a couple of the questions wrong, but if I was working in a group, one of my teammates would certainly override me and explain why that answer was incorrect. In Janie's, each member of the group can come up with a different part of the story and mold it together to form a fantastic tale. Group work would probably work better in Janie's, but it's not impossible to accomplish it in all three activities.

-Brian: I didn't even think about how we could incorporate group activity and now that you mention it, I am glad that you disagree with me because I can see how it can in fact work. Good job! As we move towards colloaborating on this assignment, I think that our group will definiately come to a productive consensus on how to tackle inquiry based learning. ---JeanMarie