Fun Canadian Heritage Grade 6 Inquiry Lesson Plan: Embrace the Chaos

Vassily Kandinsky (1913) Composition VII. [oil on canvas]
Treyakov Gallery, Moscow. 

"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."
--Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 

Night and day. Yin and yang. Apollonian and Dionysian. Order and Chaos. We as humans love our binaries and dichotomies. The longer you live and the more you study though, you come to realize that you don't need to pick between one or the other, because often it is in finding balance between two seemingly oppositional ideas that we attain harmony. It is no different in a classroom.

Yes, of course teachers should have control over their classroom. Teachers are there to help focus and guide students, to make sure they are learning the curriculum, and perhaps turning into responsible, kind citizens along the way. But a little bit of messiness or chaos in the classroom can be a good thing, and in fact can allow students to reach creative heights they may not have achieved on their own. Inquiry based learning allows students to craft their own topics and present information in their own way (depending on how the teacher is organizing the inquiry). While this seems like a great idea in theory, it can also get a little messy, as my Brock teacher education group discovered while presenting our lesson plan demonstration.

You can read the full plan in a link below, but here's a brief summary of the lesson:

Subject: Social Studies
Grade: 6
Topic: Canadian Identity

Minds On: (5 Minutes)

• Propose inquiry question on Linoit: When you hear the phrase “Canadian Identity” what questions come to mind? What questions do you think others may have about the concept of Canadian Identity? e.g. someone from a different region of Canada or different country than you

• Have students access Linoit on their individual devices.
• As a class brainstorm some major concepts and ideas that come to mind

Action: (10 Minutes)

• Assign each table group a column in the Google Doc chart
• Have each group pick an idea from the Linoit word wall
• Use the brainstormed ideas and concepts as prompts for further questioning
• Have students ask as many questions as they can in ten minutes
• Encourage students to take ideas further and draw deeper connections

Consolidation: (10 Minutes)

• Have each table group explain why they chose their line of questioning
• Have students review the responses of the whole class
• Are there any responses they feel stand out?

Reflection

So seems like a decent plan in theory right? Its execution was a little rockier. First, our links didn't work, so there needed to be troubleshooting and some stalling on our part. This can happen in any classroom in any subject, so I'm not overly concerned about that. It is more something that you need to keep in mind when incorporating technology into your lesson. Teachers need to be simultaneously positive and cynical (or perhaps a more apt term would be realistic?). Positive in overall attitude, but cynical in that you need to plan expecting for something to go wrong, and then make a plan B (or C, D, E). We should've done some more tests of the links before presentation time, but it all worked out in the end anyway so I guess it's not as bad as it could have been.

Another thing I would change in doing the lesson again is providing a way through the discussion to hold students accountable for their contributions to the brainstorm. This could be accomplished through having students add their initials when they post, or if we were using a Google doc, to be logged into their Google account so teachers can track who made what contribution. This reduces the chances of the smart-alecks of the class adding silly, inappropriate, or merely unproductive questions to the brainstorm (as we received many contributions that were, uh, let's just say less than ideal). 

Finally, another change I would make would be to incorporate more modeled examples into the lesson. For example, before filling in the Google doc, I would show students that they are supposed to pick a vertical, rather than horizontal column to fill in with information. Many students are highly visual in their learning and if you merely show them what the work should look like, it will reduce the amount of confusion and follow-up questions. 

Apart from that though, I think the lesson went fairly well, if it was a bit sloppy in execution. But hey, that's a beast you just have to wrestle with when you're using inquiry in the classroom.

You can access the Google doc for the lesson plan here. Feel free to use or change how you see fit, but I just ask if you make any adjustments to it, let me know so I can try those changes out too!