The+Process

Part One: Planning and Gathering

To begin, students choose a question from the novel that they are reading. They begin by doing some general research into their question and hope that that will lead them into a more specific topic that they find interesting. They record their question and information in their Inquiry Planner.

My students love to watch videos on YouTube to gather information. The most predominant struggle that they have is selecting keywords from their questions to help them search. No matter how many times we go through the process, I always have a least one try to search of their entire question. It's something we have to work on!

Here, one of my students is learning about the Ukrainian Genocide by watching a video. Her question is "How and why did the Ukrainian genocide end?

This student is wondering what role the U.S. government had in supplying weapons to the Khmer Rouge during the Cambodian Genocide. He is reading //Alive in the Killing Feilds// by Nawuth Keat. His original question was "How and why did this genocide start?" After beginning his research, he discovered the U.S. link and through processing the information, narrowed his idea to his current question. What a cool way to learn! He has also been in contact with the author/main character in the book via Facebook.