The many levels of inquiry

Elementary teachers often struggle with how to design and implement inquiry instruction with their students. For many, just understanding what inquiry is can be difficult--let alone designing activities that support high levels of inquiry. In this article, the authors present a continuum by which to evaluate an activity's level of inquiry. Then, using a fifth-grade unit exploring sinking and floating, they describe examples of each type of inquiry from low-level structured inquiry to high-level open inquiry. (Contains 1 figure and lists 1 online resource.) (http://www.nsta.org/publications/browse_journals.aspx?action=issue&thetype=all&id=10.2505/3/sc08_046_02)