Inquiry

I work at a Math and Science Academy. In some schools that are coined with the same term, it doesn't really mean much but at our school we are leaning toward becoming completely inquiry based. It fits pretty well with the "import paradigm." I'm on the lucky side of things because my school is completely embracing the idea of dispositions of learners.

So in my attempt at inquiry, I offered up a simple task for the 2nd graders. I dumped an entire box of 96 crayons onto their desk and said, "How can we organize these?" The questions, strategies, and creative groupings they created blew my mind. They were so insightful, they were talking about how there's no 'right' answer to where some colors go, that they can sometimes be in more than one category. My biggest successes revolve around the students knowing that in art (and in life) there is often more than one right answer.