Tag Archives: Inquiry-Based Learning

Defining the Elephant in the Room: What, Exactly, is Close Reading?

Posted on October 19, 2015 by

After months of research and soul-searching, I’ve come to the realization that I can’t use the terminology of “close reading” in my classes any longer. This has been a long journey for me, as I’ve tried to understand what “close … Continue reading →

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The Value of Talk

Posted on October 5, 2015 by

The other day, my daughter called and asked me about a recipe. We chatted about its origin, and recalled a funny story that went with it. Our lively  conversation had stemmed from a simple question. Recently, I’ve been paying close … Continue reading →

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Time Well Spent

Posted on December 18, 2014 by

Time. There’s never enough of it, is there? Whenever I talk to teachers about my efforts to use an inquiry approach to teaching, they almost always ask, “How do you find the time?” To be honest, it isn’t easy. As … Continue reading →

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The Writing Is Small, But the Work Is Big

Posted on December 9, 2014 by

In my last two blog posts (21st Century Literacy and Alligator in the Classroom), I began to tell the story of a shared inquiry project on the American Alligator that my first grade students and I engaged in last winter.  The … Continue reading →

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Alligator in the Classroom

Posted on October 2, 2014 by

This is the second in a series of posts about inquiry-based learning in the first grade classroom. In my last blog post  I wrote about the day a student’s dad surprised my first grade class with a preserved alligator head. … Continue reading →

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