Inquiry-based Learning and Historical Thinking

I have used inquiry-based learning in my Literature courses through Reading Journals and Socratic Seminars. 

For a reading journal entry, students read an assigned section and keep a log consisting of ten categories: 1. proper nouns, 2. facts and information, 3. "my thoughts", 4. quote that caught my eye and why, 5. visualize, 6. make connections, 7. ask questions, 8. infer, 9. determine importance, 10. synthesize.   After modeling and guided practice, students come to complete these journals independently.  The journals are used as a source for an inquiry-based discussion.  For instance, I can ask, "What inferences did you make from last night's reading?  Please point to a corresponding passage."  From there, the students generate the inquiry by interrogating the text once potential inferences are presented.  The method allows for trial and error; students learn from their mistakes. 

Rather than giving them study guide questions, I give them categories for active reading and rules of notice.  This approach must be balanced with the traditional instruction of content; they are less capable of commenting analytically if they do not have the terminology for literary elements.  Nonetheless, the format of student-generated inquiry--in which, without prompting, they present the questions for consideration, generate the connections to the world, their lives, and other artwork, determine the "big ideas", etc.--supersedes the content of teacher-generated lecture notes.  If the student adequately interrogates and explains an ironic moment, let the word irony come later.

Socratic Seminars are foundational for inquiry-based learning in Literature, and I use them as a formal forum for the application of reading journal entries and five categories of questioning.  In order to participate in a scheduled seminar, students must arrive with five types of questions on the reading for that day's discussion: 1. close-ended, 2. open-ended, 3. world-connection, 4. theme/message, 5. literary/author's choices. While I take notes as a "fly on the wall", merely observing, students run a seminar with the purpose of addressing questions they have pondered and showcasing thoughts from their reading journals.  Questions lead to further questions and the inquiry becomes spontaneous, as students create new connections that were not prepared in advance.  The inquiry-based learning approach aims to teach learners how to learn, regardless of the content.  Proponents argue that students do not need the appendix to Hirsch's Cultural Literacy, but a toolbox of critical thinking skills that move from basic observation and literal comprehension to synthesis, application, design, and invention.  The Socratic Seminar meets the criteria of inquiry-based learning because students are not asked to come with a discrete set of answers and facts but with an amendable bank of inquiry topics and with evidence of active, critical reading.

Historical thinking theories propose that certain thinking skills result from the study of history.  Doubtless the same is true for the study of literature. For instance, in history, they learn chronology and sequence; in literature, they learn comparable concepts of plot and cause-and-effect.  Historical thinking proponents also advocate reading textbooks with a critical eye.  Students are encouraged to remain mindful of the biased perspective of all authors, regardless of their efforts to remain comprehensive and objective.  The same critical stance used in historical reading (of primary and secondary texts) should be applied in the reading of literature: questioning unreliable narrators, evaluating the effects of time periods on authors, etc.

I need to spend time this semester researching ways to incorporate inquiry-based learning and technology.