Jon Griffith's Portfolio Page
About me
A 15 year veteran in education. For 10 years I taught Social Studies primarily in urban and disadvantaged youth programs in North Carolina and New York. I currently support teachers by facilitating learning communities, professional development, and instructional coaching. I worked for one of our Regional BOCES in Instructional Support, and recently relocated back to North Carolina. My lifelong learning continues daily. My favorite instructional strategies include inquiry and student discourse. I have a passion for all things history as well as a love for the music and arts and sciences.
Using Inquiry Based Practices to Improve Student Discourse
The purpose of this course is to provide educators with instructional practices that will foster deeper student discussions through inquiry based practices. Asking questions, deeper analysis of content and context, collaboration, and sense-making are developmental skills that make up 21st Century skills students should understand before graduating. These life long skills will support their cognitive, social-emotional, and professional growth in the future.
Topics 1) Overview of Advanced Literacies 2) Shifts in Classroom Discussions 3) Foundations of Inquiry Design Models 4) Using Inquiry to Support Student Discourse 5) Classroom Examples and Instructional Strategies
Needs Assessment
The Instructional Problem:
New York State Learning Standards denote that students have both understanding of content knowledge coupled with development of specific skills associated with specific content. The intentionality of the standards is to produce life long learners. 21st Century skills that will hallmark progress in educational success are shared throughout content and grade levels. In the Introduction to the New York State Next Generation English Language Arts Standards (2017), there are references to developing and building those lifelong learners. This is evident through the proposed practices of “Life Long Readers and Writers” (p.3) as well as the call for learning those skills through advanced literacy (p.1). “Advanced literacies denote a set of skills and competencies that enable communication, spoken and written, in increasingly diverse ways and with increasingly diverse audiences” (NYSED, 2017). These advanced literacies are foundational to learning, understanding, and providing support for civic engagement in the communities our learners will participate in.
These practices are embedded in every framework standard across all contents. Literacy being the foundational standards by which all contents are connected makes the development of these skills a part of all curriculum. Success for those literacies can be found under the Briefs that were released by New York in 2017 alongside the roll out for the Next Generation Standards in ELA and Math. This course is going to focus on Hallmark 2 of Advanced Literacies Instruction. Specifically how integrating the instructional practices of advanced literacies match with Inquiry Based Instructional Design Models. Inquiry and discourse are instructional models that are most associated with Science and Social Studies content. However, Inquiry can be utilized throughout multiple contents depending on the degree of inquiry. Constructivist Theories support Inquiry based instruction in several case studies. Inquiry is one of the oldest forms of instructional practice.
What Will Be Learned: A framework for what the course will be providing will walk teachers through the implementation of the shifts described in the literacy briefs on classroom discussion; Provide a model for student discourse by using several inquiry based approaches; How to align these instructional practices to the core content standards and their intentions; And building assessment tools that support data collection for student success in advanced literacies.
Analysis of the Learner and Context
Educators are tasked with supporting and facilitating student learning at grade level in every school in the country. The implications of federal mandates like NCLB and ESSA sets regulations on student performance and competencies which are reflected in New York State Standards and Assessments. This is not new for teachers and the expectation for teachers to all be teachers who support literacy and literacy practices in their classroom is not new. Many teachers of various content however, are not literacy specialists. This course is to provide support for developing greater understanding of literacy practices folded into the design of learning tasks and models of instruction. The teachers that would benefit the most from this course are teachers of the following contents:
- Science
- Social Studies and other Social Sciences
Although Math teachers could also benefit they require a specific type of literacy that does not include inquiry practices. ELA and ESL teachers are also not a target focus as they are already providing instruction in this area through other literacy practices. Yet, they could take away new experiences on integrating inquiry methods of instruction to support advanced literacies in their classrooms.
The context for this work is backed by the College, Career, and Civic Readiness that is expected for student progression in transitioning out of high school. Whether students will be pursuing college degrees or entering the workforce, life long skills such as effective communication, collaboration, and compromise will be a part of their daily experiences. Teachers who are providing more opportunities for students to hold discussions based on content and world experiences are preparing students to look beyond the content and see the other students in the room as counterparts to their own learning.
The goal of this course is to provide teachers with the efficacy to plan and develop more tasks that center around student inquiry and discourse. Developing instructional routines that become the culture of the classroom and their schools.
Learning Intentions
Teachers will review inquiry based practices for lesson design.
Teachers will review student discussion protocols for use with inquiry based lessons.
Teachers will walkthrough an online inquiry cycle to develop questions used to support classroom discourse.
Curriculum Map
Lesson 1: Reviewing Advanced Literacies - Foundations for the Importance of Classroom Discussions
Lesson 2: Shifts in Classroom Discussions - Building Self-Efficacy in Student Discussion
Lesson 3: Spirit of Inquiry - Types of Inquiry and Their Uses
References and Resources
Lesaux, Nonie K. & Galloway, Emily P. Linguistically Diverse Learners and the NYS Next Generation P-12 Learning Standards: Brief 4 of 8. (2017). New York State Education Department. http://www.nysed.gov/common/nysed/files/programs/bilingual-ed/nys_briefs_brieft-4-of-8_-summer_2017_hallmark_2-final-edited-may-2018.p._.pdf
Lloyd, M. H., Kolodziej, N. J., & Brashears, K. M. (2016). Classroom Discourse: An Essential Component in Building a Classroom Community. School Community Journal, 26(2), 291–304. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1124019.pdf
MacKenzie, T. (2016, December 1). Bringing Inquiry-Based Learning Into Your Class. Edutopia.Org. https://www.edutopia.org/article/bringing-inquiry-based-learning-into-your-class-trevor-mackenzie
Mthethwa-Sommers, S. (2010). Inquiry Based Method: A Case Study to Reduce Levels of Resistance. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 22(1), 55–63. Full Text: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ913529.pdf
The Teaching Center. (2018). Asking Questions to Improve Learning. Washington University. https://ctl.wustl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Asking-questions-to-improve-learning.pdf
The Question Formulation Technique in 90 Seconds. (2019, June 3). [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04cHyeUVuKg&feature=youtu.be