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| Humpback whale. Photography. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016. Accessed 4 Nov 2020. |
In the past 6 weeks of teaching online, the part that I find most enjoyable is considering new ways to make my classes more interactive through inquiry. For example, using primary source images to get kids thinking and wondering about a period in history has been a successful strategy to teach inquiry. Showing kids intriguing images engages the students and leads them to ask all kinds of questions about what they think is happening and why. These questions inspire kids to want to learn and discover the answers for themselves. The learning that results from these types of investigations is therefore much deeper and more meaningful. This type of interactive assignment also works well in the online learning environment because student interest increases attentiveness and motivation to learn.
Great teachers, “open with a mystery and turn their students into detectives, sending them off to gather clues.”
So, when Trevor O’Driscoll reached out to ask if we could pose a question to his students as a way to focus their exploration of our library databases for facts about whales, I jumped at the idea. Trevor had come across a New York Times Op-Ed article by researchers Adam and Allison Sweet Grant called “Kids Can Love Learning, Even Over Zoom”. They suggest that there are key principles for nurturing kids' interest in learning: mystery, exploration, and meaning. Great teachers, “open with a mystery and turn their students into detectives, sending them off to gather clues.” This mystery, combined with time to explore, leads kids to make deeper meaning from their discoveries. What intriguing challenge could we unveil to inspire further exploration?
I remembered something I’d learned about humpback whales - how they work together to hunt schools of fish by circling them and creating a kind of net by blowing bubbles. The behavior is called bubble-net feeding. I thought that instead of an image this time, a video would truly capture this behavior and serve as the mystery to engage the students. I found several bubble-netting videos and chose two -- one with an aerial view showing the circle of bubbles shining white against a purple black sea, and another filmed at the surface of the water, eye-level with these massive creatures as they crash through the corralled fish, gulping great quantities of water and food. I knew these videos would capture the kids’ attention; however, none of the articles written for 8 year-olds mentioned this behavior. Since Trevor and I liked these videos so much and knew they would spark the kids’ curiosity, we decided that we would use them later in a follow-up activity in which the kids would come up with other resources for finding the answers. We needed another whale activity that would hook the kids.
I went back to the drawing board. I knew all of our databases included information about why scientists think whales breach. A quick search yielded a video captured by a tourist on a whale watch in Monterey Bay just 2 days prior, which caught the rare occurrence of two adult humpbacks and a baby breaching together.
Though I suspected this was a good idea, I wasn’t prepared for how excited all of the kids would get about trying to solve this puzzle. On the day of the class, we screened the video and asked them to put on their scientist hats as they observed the whales. After viewing, we asked them 3 questions. What kind of whales are they? What are these whales doing? Why do scientists think they do this? We divided them into small groups and had them discuss what they observed. Next, we had them think about how they would research the answers. My group decided that they first wanted to figure out what kind of whales they were. They noticed that the whales were large and gray. They also saw that the underside of their flippers were white and that they had grooves in their throats. So they began by looking at pictures of the different whales until they discovered which one looked most similar. One 3rd grader suggested that once they figured out what kind of whale it was, they could search whale behavior to figure out what this jumping and twirling action was called.
By simply developing an intriguing question that was just challenging enough, the kids discussed the topic deeply, talked with their classmates to develop and improve search strategies, and engaged with the material longer
At this point, their curiosities piqued, we let them loose. The room filled with lively discussion. They talked about the facts they discovered and discussed their strategies for their next steps. Near the end of class, we gathered to share what they had learned, and every idea generated further discussion. When a student offered a new fact, other students jumped in with additional information they had found about the topic. Without prompting from Trevor or me, they described how they searched the databases for information, and which database they found most helpful. By simply developing an intriguing question that was just challenging enough, the kids discussed the topic deeply, talked with their classmates to develop and improve search strategies, and engaged with the material longer than they had in previous classes where they explored the databases freely. Ultimately posing a mystery at the beginning of class led to much deeper thinking and learning. This is the real value of inquiry-based teaching and learning. When students generate their own questions, they want to find the answers, focus their efforts, and look more closely. Their successes, in turn, make learning - even online learning - more enjoyable and rewarding for them and for me.
BBC America. "Incredible Humpback Whale Bubble Net Hunt. Nature's Great Events" YouTube. 26 September 2019, https://youtu.be/KBiKnpqWsMI.