Knowledge, Skills, and Processes – IBL Week 2

This week’s readings took a clearer look into what skills our students need to have when they leave the hallowed hallways of our high schools. Whether it be entering the work force or going on to college, our students need to have a set of skills beyond the knowledge and content they have acquired. These skills, I believe, are those that could be taught through Inquiry Based Learning (IBL) activities.

The types of skills discussed were process skills - how I might use the information I know to get the job done. I learned that these abilities fall under the umbrella of critical thinking skills. These skills are observing, questioning, investigating, predicting, analyzing, and communicating. The student must take an active role in his/her own learning. It is not enough just to know the Pythagorean Theorem and be able to correctly solve the equation, but to know how and when it needs to be used to solve a problem.

What question still stays with me as I continue through the course is, does IBL fit well with all the content areas? Science seems to be the most logical home for IBL. What about language arts concepts? Or do I need to think about focusing more on the process than the content being taught? Sounds a bit confusing. I guess you could say that is where I am when considering Inquiry Based Learning as a method of teaching my students.