Concept-Based Inquiry in Action: Strategies to Promote Transferable Understanding

by Carla Marschall, Rachel French

Create a thinking classroom that helps students move from the factual to the conceptual 

Concept-Based Inquiry is a framework for inquiry that promotes deep understanding. The key is using guiding questions to help students inquire into concepts and the relationships between them. Concept-Based Inquiry in Action provides teachers with the tools and resources necessary to organize and focus student learning around concepts and conceptual relationships that support the transfer of understanding. Step by step, the authors lead both new and experienced educators to implement teaching strategies that support the realization of inquiry-based learning for understanding in any K–12 classroom.
 

Genres: Education

368 pages, Paperback

Published July 5, 2018

Reviews

[Ian Tymms · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very clearly set out and packed full of useful strategies. A very handy resource to have available when planning and reviewing units.

If your objective is to support students to develop transferable conceptual understandings - in other words students who can think for themselves - then this is an invaluable resource.

[Adrienne Michetti · Rating 5 out of 5]

In short, this is a book that takes all that theory — that stuff you KNOW already is true about concept-based learning — and puts it into easy-to-implement bite-sized strategies you can use immediately. It literally is that easy. You will read even just one chapter and will want to DO that thing in that chapter in your next lesson, and guess what? You CAN! French and Marschall make it so ridiculously accessible. I've kept this book on my desk for the last 10 weeks, with multiple pages tagged and noted, and I'm using the strategies here and there where they fit.. Even in places I know aren't truly inquiry, it is an entry point and an invitation for kids' learning to move in that direction, and once that door is open, who knows what exciting ways the learning might evolve?

If you read this book and *still* say you can't make your classroom more concept-based, then I've got nothing left to say...

[Colette]

This is the only professional book I've ever read twice. Did a thorough second read as this is related to the work I'll be doing this year. Lots of great food for thought and connections to educational research.

[Stuart Macalpine]

Clear and useful strategies for concept based learning - goes well with AAA+ model we use at UWCSEA East.