Inquiry Questions

I made a short presentation about inquiry questions for our upcoming subject retreat days. From what I have seen in my school, along with various others is:

• teachers struggle with writing debatable questions
• some teachers throw in 25+ factual questions, because they write all the content/skills/knowledge of a unit into a factual question. These should be included in the learning process. Inquiry questions are broad and link to the statement of inquiry
• Often teachers don't use the key or related concepts to help them write any of the inquiry questions. I tend to go here first - for example, if my key concept was 'community', then I would have: Factual - what is a community? Conceptual: How does community shape who you are? Debatable: Is belong to a community more important that individuality?
• Teachers don't use them to scaffold the learning. When someone first told me to use them in this way it was such a game changer for me! I show all the questions at the start of the unit, but we first unpack/answer the factual questions. We cover the conceptual towards the middle of the unit, and we end with a reflection linked to our debatable question
• Some teachers write way too many inquiry questions to possibly cover! I always try to go for the model three factual, two conceptual and one debatable. Of course this is not concrete and each time I cover a unit, students generate additional questions.
• Use debatable questions that really get the students to argue and debate! They can also be used to help make Service/Action connections!
• Here's the presentation.​