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Session 1. Levels of Inquiry: From Confirmation to Open
Objective. Identify the level of inquiry in a textbook activity and move it exactly one level up, choosing the level that fits your students, time and materials.
You probably already use experiments, but many textbook experiments tell students the question, the steps and even the result. Naming the level of inquiry shows you where students do the thinking and where the book does it for them. Once you can name the level, you can change one thing at a time and see whether your class is ready for more freedom. This session gives you a simple map and a way to move on it carefully in a 45-minute lesson.
Key ideas
What inquiry is, and what it is not
- In inquiry, students answer a question by collecting and using evidence. The thinking is done by the student, not only by the textbook or the teacher.
- It is not 'do whatever you like' and it is not only for science. Language, mathematics, history and geography all have questions that can be investigated.
- A lesson can be inquiry even when it is short and uses only paper. What matters is that students must use evidence to decide something.
Four levels: who supplies what
- Confirmation: teacher gives the question and the method, and the answer is known. Students confirm it. Structured: teacher gives question and method, but students build the explanation from their evidence.
- Guided: teacher gives the question; students design the method. Open: students also choose the question. The framework comes from Banchi and Bell, who describe these as four steps on a ladder.
- Quick test: ask 'Who decides the question? Who decides the method? Who decides what the results mean?'. Count how many are the student.
Choosing the level that fits
- No level is 'best'. Confirmation is fine for learning a skill, such as reading a thermometer. Open inquiry needs time, experience and a teacher who can support many different plans.
- Match the level to your students' experience, the time (one 45-minute lesson or two), the materials and the safety risk. A class new to inquiry usually starts at structured.
- Move up one level at a time and give the class the support from Session 3 so that more freedom does not become confusion.
Try it in your next lessons
- Pick one activity in your next unit and name its level. Change only one thing: remove the printed result, or let groups choose how to measure.
- Evidence to bring back (exit ticket): each student finishes 'I think ... because our data show ...'. Keep 5 slips from different students.
- Write one line: what was harder for you, and what was harder for the students?
Four levels of inquiry
Reading the ladder: question, method, meaning
A useful way to read the four levels is to ask three questions: who decides the question, who decides the method, and who decides what the results mean. In confirmation, the teacher or book decides all three. In structured inquiry the students take over the meaning. In guided inquiry they also design the method. In open inquiry they choose the question too. Each step hands over one more decision.
This also explains why the levels are not a ranking of good and bad. A pupil who has never used a ruler for a measurement needs a confirmation task first. The skill of measuring is then available when the same pupil designs a test later.
Moving up without losing the class
Raising the level is not the same as removing teacher support. When you give up one decision, you add a scaffold for it. If students now design the method, give a planning sheet with three headings. If they now explain the result, give sentence starters such as 'Our data show ... so we think ...'.
Plan time as well. A guided version of a 10-minute confirmation task may need 25 minutes. If you have one lesson only, choose the structured level and keep the guided version for a two-lesson sequence.
Examples from the classroom
Salt in Fergana
Scene. Aziz teaches Grade 6 in Fergana. The book says to dissolve 10 g of salt in 100 ml of water and note that the salt 'disappears'. Aziz removes the sentence and asks groups to explain from their weighing what happens to the salt and how they know. Twelve groups, 15 minutes, one balance for every three groups.
Insight. One change, from confirmation to structured: students now explain from evidence.
Parachutes in Samarkand
Scene. Malika, Grade 7, Samarkand, has paper, string and small stones. She gives groups the question 'What makes a parachute fall more slowly?' but not the method. Groups choose width, shape or load, then time three drops from a 2 metre mark. She gives a planning sheet with 'we change / we measure / we keep the same'.
Insight. Guided inquiry works when each handed-over decision comes with a scaffold.
Words in Bukhara
Scene. Dilnoza teaches Uzbek in Grade 4 in Bukhara. The textbook lists the plural suffix rule. She asks students to collect twenty words from the reader and sort them by what happens when -lar is added. Students notice exceptions and write their own rule in two sentences. This is structured inquiry in a language lesson, with paper only.
Insight. Inquiry is not only science: any rule can be discovered from examples.
Common pitfalls
- Calling a task 'inquiry' because students use equipment, even when the result is printed in the book.
- Jumping from confirmation to open inquiry in one lesson and then deciding that 'my class cannot do inquiry'.
- Changing three things at once, so that you cannot tell what helped or what confused students.
- Treating confirmation tasks as bad and dropping skill practice that students still need.
Move a Textbook Experiment Up a Level
- Read the four task cards (A-D) in your Activity Kit. Alone (5 min): write the level of each, using the quick test 'who decides the question, the method, the meaning?'.
- In pairs (10 min): compare answers and agree. Then take the Grade 7 'Parachute' confirmation card and rewrite it as STRUCTURED inquiry by changing one thing.
- In the same pairs (10 min): rewrite it again as GUIDED inquiry. List what students now decide and what support you must add.
- As a group (10 min): choose which of the three versions you would use with your own class next week and say why. Write the exit-ticket sentence for it.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which textbook activities in your subject are confirmation, and which could easily become structured?
- What support did you need to add when you gave students the method to design?
- What would tell you that your class is ready for the next level?
Reflect
- Which of your favourite activities is actually confirmation?
- What worries you most about giving students more choice?
- Which class of yours could try a guided version first?
Try it tomorrow
- Choose one textbook experiment and write who decides the question, the method and the meaning.
- Remove the printed result from the student sheet and ask for an 'I think ... because our data show ...' slip from each student.
- Read five slips tonight and sort them: explains from data, partly, not yet. Note one thing to scaffold next time.
Further reading and links
Ask who decides the question, the method and the meaning; then move up only one level at a time.