Comprehension & Collaboration: Inquiry Circles for curiosity, engagement, and understanding

by Stephanie Harvey, Harvey "Smokey" Daniels

Meet the standards.
Celebrate kids’ curiosity and questions.
Cover the curriculum.
Reach and include everyone.
Grow resourceful, engaged citizens.
Seriously?
With inquiry circles, you seriously can—and Stephanie Harvey and Smokey Daniels can’t wait to show you how.
“Educators around the country,” Steph and Smokey write, “are discovering that inquiry is the secret opportunity offered by new national and state standards.” Their Comprehension & Collaboration, Revised Edition, is your end-to-end guide to small-group inquiry projects that work.

Successful inquiry isn’t simply sticking five kids together and telling them to research a topic. So Steph and Smokey share four kinds of inquiry units of increasing richness with all the teaching and planning resources you need. From preparing students for active learning and effective collaboration through assessment and evaluation, Comprehension & Collaboration, Revised Edition, gives you more of what teachers nationwide loved about the first edition:

37 strategy lessons, including 11 completely new ones, for thinking and collaboration
7 new step-by-step classroom stories that model inquiry-based units
Groundbreaking research in comprehension, collaboration, and inquiry
Connections to inquiry structures such as makers, design thinking, genius hour, and capstone projects
Tips on common questions about management and accountability
A completely rewritten chapter on the wise use of technology
Specific correlations from inquiry circles to common state and national standards.
Talk-and-test may seem easier or less messy, but it can’t meet the demands on today’s teachers. That’s why the time for inquiry is now and why now is the time for Comprehension & Collaboration, Revised Edition. Because as Steph and Smokey write, “It is only through highly engaging, experiential, and deeply supportive pedagogy that we can meet lofty standards and prepare kids for high-stakes tests—but also grow curious, lifelong learners.”
~Description from Heinemann Publishers

357 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2015

Reviews

[Paige Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comprehension & Collaboration: Inquiry Circles for Curiosity, Engagement, and Understanding is a great reference for any teacher, librarian, or administrator wanting to find ways to instill more opportunities for inquiry into their classrooms, libraries, and/or schoolwide. Harvey and Daniels make it easy for even the novice to the idea of inquiry to implement these strategies into their curriculum. The book is broken down into four sections: Part 1 – Why Small-Group Inquiry Projects?, Part 2 – Planning for Small-Group Inquiry, Part 3 – Four Models of Small-Group Inquiries, and Part 4 – Measuring Progress with Inquiry.
Part 1 is designed to inform you about why kids should use inquiry throughout their school day, and throughout their schoolwork over the whole school year. It explains that inquiry is not a school project, not a one-and-done, but a value, a skill instilled in students to ask questions and find answers to those questions. Those answers may lead to bigger problem solutions in the future. Part 1 will definitely get you excited about inquiry and motivate you to try it in your classroom!
Part 2 is the how of the process. This part is full of real-life examples of teachers’ experiences with inquiry in their own classrooms. This part can seem a little unobtainable because some of the inquiry examples are absolutely amazing work done by exceptional young people, such as a fourteen-year-old girl eventually signing a deal with a cell phone company to recycle old cell phones to pay for active-duty soldiers’ cell phone bills that are serving overseas. This part of the book can also be a little frustrating with the assumption that all students have easy access to the internet or smart devices (iPads, tablets, smart phones, laptops, etc.), which is not always the case. Don’t let that discourage you! The fundamentals of inquiry are here and will serve you well whichever direction you take them.
Part 3 has four different chapters that are step-by-step guides to four different types of inquiries and Part 4 explains how to assess an inquiry cycle.
I will be honest, when I first saw the title of this book I thought it would be a book about how to collaborate with other teachers using inquiry, so I was a little disappointed that it was collaboration between the students. That being said, it is a great tool for promoting student collaboration! If you have any interest or questions about how to incorporate inquiry into your classroom or curriculum, this is a great book to start with.
I would suggest this book for any teacher, librarian, or school administrator interested in focusing on inquiry in the classroom.

[Nancy McGriff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comprehension and Collaboration is an excellent reference book for implementing inquiry based learning. Stephanie Harvey and “Smokey” Daniels give practical and easy to understand explanations and examples of inquiry and how it can be implemented into learning settings. I especially liked all of the lesson plans, technology resources, and teaching tips on how to actually implement inquiry based learning into a curriculum. One of the things that has been particularly helpful in working with many of my high school students is the idea of modeling my thinking. The process of actually talking through how I am thinking about a project or an idea was a little awkward at first. However, actually using this technique in front of the students has made a real difference in not only how fast they are able to start a project, but also in the quality of the finished project.

I do have a couple of slight concerns about this book. The problem with recommending specific technology solutions is that the technology can become outdated very quickly and it is easier to just use what is recommended rather than looking around to see if there is something newer or better that could be used. I am a school librarian and am new to inquiry teaching methods. So even though the authors admit that some of their examples are rather exceptional and ideal, it was a little overwhelming to think that I need to aspire to achieve some of the things that the authors suggest are possible with inquiry. However, this book is an excellent resource for those who are interested in learning and implementing inquiry based methods with their students.

[Nadia · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a school librarian in-training, this book will be one of my go-to references when designing student collaboration! Comprehension and Collaboration, written by Stephanie Harvey and Harvey 'Smokey'Daniels, touches on the importance of not only inquiry but the value of collaboration and the ability to take questioning to another level. Lessons and text focus on the development of listening, communication skills, and the use of background knowledge to empower a conversation. All of these things help build strong and effective inquiry circles of curiosity, engagement, and understanding of one another. There are many examples of how to connect inquiry and collaboration with all grade levels and the authors thoughtfully illustrate to readers how inquiry circles tie into state standards, SEL, and new technologies. This student-centered approach of learning and inquiry empowers students and helps build empathy in our students. This book will be greatly appreciated by both library and classroom educators as a tool to design collaborative inquiry into your curricular learning for building comprehensive understandings.