Students are accustomed to learning information from the teacher, and then using that information to pass a test. My inquiry-based research unit is very different, so the discussion questions to the left get students in the right mindset for success in this unit. 

You've gotta talk the talk before you can do the research, as they say. Before moving on to the "meat" of the research unit, we'll use the materials to the left to make sure that students have the schema they need to succeed in the process of inquiry-based research. We'll start with a response-card activity to learn the basic meaning of the words, and then move on to create a team-wide mind map based on all the relevant concepts. 

The important part of inquiry-based research is to start with questions worth answering. The question stems to the left and the high-interest topics we brainstorm as a class help prevent students from picking answers that are closed-ended: "how many people lost their job last year?" or that carry obvious bias: "why are people so mean to dogs when dogs are better than people?" The questions submitted to the form we use will be evaluated to ensure that students are doing real research, not just proving what they already know.  

This part of the unit is imperative. Students must have a good question, with many valid sources of information. What this assignment does is help students figure out if they actually want to read about the research questions they've selected. This assignment also naturally differentiates the assignment based on these initial search criteria: students with lower reading levels find themselves disinterested in deeply scientific texts, and chose simpler questions to research.  

Before doing any reading, it's important to know that your sources are relevant, credible, accessible, and rich. The graphic organizer to the left helps students look at sources objectively, and to evaluate them before spending a lot of time closely reading a source that may or may not be reputable. 

Students will do three close-reads on text using whatever Close Read Tools they prefer. During these close reads their goal is to accumulate evidence that could possibly work to answer their research question. The trick is to look for the answers the text supports, not the answers subject to our own biases and personal experience. 

After reading closely at least three sources, students are ready to make a claim to answer their research question, and to support that claim with evidence from the sources they've read. 

Students answer their own research question, after evaluating their own sources, forming their own claim, and accruing their own evidence.