KIMMARIEINQUIRYACTIVITY


 * Kim-Marie Cespedes **
 * EDU 7666 **
 * Professor Signer **
 * March 7, 2010 **


 * // (A) //** The activity completed on the American Revolutionary war was an inquiry-based activity that required a response from Primary Sources on the role of women and attitude towards slavery during the Revolutionary War. There was a module on the American Revolutionary war which gave an overview on the war, the role of government and probe more questions on the significance of the war. Criteria1 is to gather and analyze data and incorporate the use of open-ended questions to understand what the role of women and African Americans was during the revolutionary war in addition to the role of government. Criteria 2 was to analyze what the quotations suggested about late 18th century American attitudes toward women where the responses given would involve flexibility, creativity and critical thinking. Criteria 3 demonstrate that student will be able to learn new information on the American Revolutionary war through exploring the impact of the revolutionary ideals on women and African American instead of mere regurgitation of data and revolutionary timelines. Student asked to jot down four important roles of women and African American during the revolutionary war and current perspective on the effect of women and slaves during the war. How significant was their contribution to the war? Artifacts used to understand and convey the importance of the war and the role of women and African American during the war and the conclusions drawn based on the interpretation of the artifact.

· Read historical narratives, biographies, and autobiographies to learn about how historical figures lived, their motivations, hopes, fears, strengths, and weaknesses · Explore narrative accounts of important events from world history to learn about different accounts of the past to begin to understand how interpretations and perspectives develop
 * // (B)New York State Standard: //**
 * // Standard2 World History: Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major ideas, eras, themes, developments and turning point in world history and examine the broad sweep of history from a variety of perspective. //**
 * // Learning Standard 2, Key Idea 1 //**

· The study of civics, citizenship, and government involves learning about political systems; the purposes of government and civic life; and the differing assumptions held by people across time and place regarding power, authority, governance, and law. · Describe the basic purposes of government and the importance of civic life · Understand that social and political systems are based upon people’s beliefs · Discuss how and why the world is divided into nations and what kinds of governments other nations
 * // Learning Standard 5, key Idea 1 //**

Inquiry based learning is the kind of learning that allows students to become more engaged and motivated by analyzing data and addressing issues without the concern of having a right or wrong answer. Inquiry learning explores higher level critical thinking with unlimited potential for intellectual growth and development with the mindset of innovation, creativity and flexibility. This allows student to become more engaged especially in interdisciplinary areas of interest with the desire to learn more based on the awareness that inquiry based is not a close-ended question but the awareness of unlimited tasks that can be accomplished through the use of an inquisitive mind. This results in students being able to generate their own questions for more analytical and critical thinking.
 * (C) New Improved Inquiry-based definition and Rubric **


 * ** Criterias ** || ** Beginning **
 * 1 ** || ** Needs Improvement **
 * 2 ** || ** Accomplished **

Using open - ended questions instead of close-ended question to engage into activities and developing tasks. ** || Tasks required students to use minimal open-ended questions to analyze data and engage into activities. || Tasks required further improvement on the use of more open-ended questions to address specific areas of discussion in the activity. || Tasks required students to use good open-ended questions to gather, analyze and understand data and to develop more new questions. There was no use of close-ended questions. ||  ||
 * 3 ** || ** Score ** ||
 * ** Students engaging in creativity, flexibility and innovation in developing tasks. ** || Task was very limited and was merely recollection of information which lack the kind of creativity, flexibility or innovation that students would need in developing skills. || There was minimal creativity, flexibility and innovation required in developing tasks || Task required students to clearly demonstrate the use of creativity, flexibility and innovation in developing and understanding the materials to be learned. ||  ||
 * ** Students exploring higher level critical thinking in the development of tasks. ** || Tasks required Student to demonstrate little or no critical thinking in analyzing and presenting new materials learned. Responses were given based on regurgitation of facts and materials already learned. There were not much probing of essential questions on topic of discussion and was not reflected in the tasks to be completed. || Tasks required student to incorporate minimal use of critical thinking. Most responses to be completed for tasks were based on factual recalls and not much higher level thinking. || Student demonstrated a high level of critical thinking in analyzing data and materials presented. Students were able to explore and engage in further essential questions relating to tasks to be accomplished. ||  ||
 * ** The ability of students to learn new materials through exploration instead of recalling facts ** || Tasks required minimal learning through recollection of facts. There was no exploration on topic of discussion. The tasks mainly consist of student gathering and recalling facts such as historical timelines. || Tasks required learning of new materials through exploration but there was an extensive usage of factual recollections. Students still need to improve on learning new materials in a more inquisitive manner than just collecting data. || Tasks required students to explore and probe new essential questions on area of subject matter. Minimal recollection of data was given. There was more accomplished through exploration than mere regurgitation of knowledge. ||  ||
 * ** Students gathering and analyzing data and pose questions without the concern of a right or wrong answer. ** || Tasks required student to gather data but does not involve students analyzing data or asking essential questions without the concern of a right or wrong answer. || Tasks required students to collect and analyze data but does not allow students to probe new questions with the awareness of knowing that there is no right or wrong answer. || Students were able to gather, analyze data and probe new questions based on the tasks assigned without the concern of a right or wrong answer. ||  ||


 * Thanks for the positive feedbacks provided by Dr. Signer and Rose in improving Inquiry-based Rubric! **