How is ITM used to support an extended knowledge-building inquiry?

“I’ve learned that in the inquiry learning cycle you just keep going! You just don’t stop, because there is always more to learn.” –a 5th grader.

ITM is designed to sustain student-driven, long-term inquiry across knowledge-building communities.  ITM provides support for students to take on collective responsibility for charting the unfolding journey of inquiry and further build connections with other classroom communities around the world to build shared knowledge and achieve common goals. Check out this classroom video on the site of NSF-sponsored STEM for All Video Showcase: https://videohall.com/p/1623

In each knowledge building initiative that investigates a core disciplinary issue or inter-disciplinary challenge over multiple months, students carry out various inquiry activities and participate in extended knowledge building discourse to deepen their understandings. Working with their teacher, students use ITM to reflect on progress and frame/reframe shared inquiry areas and directions, create inquiry guidelines, and organize their collaborative roles to guide and deepen their knowledge work. As the inquiry and discourse deepen within their own community, students review productive threads of ideas and compose “journey of thinking” syntheses, which are shared with their buddy classrooms to stimulate cross-community interaction.

The dynamic process of knowledge building is largely open-ended and continually evolves as new ideas, problems, and connections alter the landscape of the collective work. Depending on the length and nature of the inquiry work, the whole journey may progress through several major milestones, as shown below.

More resources:

• See an example: Grade 5 inquiry about human body systems over a six-month period
• Guiding questions for teacher planning