General Inquiry

There are two types of the inquiry model, general inquiry

and Suchman inquiry. Well start with the general inquiry
and move from there.

General inquiry is where students solve problems using

skills and knowledge thinking systematically. The skill of
problem solving is developed when using a contextual
problem within the academic content and excels when
paired with procedural knowledge of problem-solving.Steps
of the Model

1. Identify/Present/Pose a Problem. A single problem

which will be the focus of the lesson is given to
students in open inquiry. Its important to make sure
that students have the necessary prerequisite skills for
the lesson, they dont have to know everything, but
they will be able to at least engage with understand
what the problem is at some level.
2. Make a Hypothesis. Students infer (hypothesize) before
gathering or analyzing any data. This is a great stop
where the teacher (you) can guide students by
brainstorming a list of inferences as a whole group and
then let the students determine which hypothesis to
 explore.
3. Gather Data. As the title implies this is where students
gather data related to the problem. Depending on the
skills of your students, they may develop their own
strategies for investigation or the teacher (you) can
just provide the data. Data is like a text, it can be
readings or videos, experiences, or experiments. Be
careful
as this is the step where teachers should provide
scaffolding, but dont overcrowd them.

4. Assess Hypothesis (Analyze the Data). Let the

students analyze the data to determine whether it
supports or refutes their original hypothesis and use
that to determine whether the hypothesis is correct or
incorrect.
5. Generalize about Findings. Students make conclusions
about the insights that they identified through
discovery and exploration. This is also a great time to
ask students if their finding are applicable to similar
topics. (or research beforehand and guide students to
whichever means youd like).

6. Analyze the Process. Wahoo! Metacognition! Do a

reflection over the entire process. Let students reflect
 on their own approaches, what they have learned, and
how their knowledge grew over the process.

This is a pretty dang awesome model and it has multiple

applications to mathematics. As I mentioned earlier this
model work really well with procedural knowledge of
problem solving, aka mathematics! There are a myriad of
different concepts that you could use with general inquiry,
one such idea is geometric shapes. What if you posed a
question of how many jellybeans are in a cylinder or a
pyramid? You could instantly have student attention and
have a great lesson! Below is a great link to a website that
has a lot of different ideas of what you could do for similar
lessons with all kinds of awesome inquiry based problems.

http://www.estimation180.com/days-181-200.html