Starting with Inquiry: A Need for Change: As a new administrator in an urban public school in New Jersey, I began my journey into Social Studies curriculum reform with a fundamental question: How do we effectively implement the New Jersey Social Studies Disciplinary Practices in a way that is engaging, meaningful, and culturally responsive for […]
It was fantastic to read this recent article published in Social Education, Teaching to a Better Test: Using the Inquiry Design Model to Reframe State-Mandated Assessment in Social Studies, which describes Virginia’s innovative spirit when it comes to state required testing in social studies. My excitement flows from multiple origin points. First, I was happy […]
Engaging with inquiry in the social studies classroom can feel like stepping onto a tightrope—balancing time, standards, and student needs all at once. But here’s the thing: you don’t have to dive headfirst into a full-scale investigation to get students curious and thinking critically. Small, manageable inquiry moments can transform your lessons, building student confidence […]
I’ve been using the C3 Inquiry Design Model (IDM) for over a decade. Generally speaking, I’ve felt successful and have shared my best practices with others in the field. But despite my students’ success in producing rich products from their work on formative performance tasks, arguments, and taking informed actions, the sensory experience of walking […]
“How do we know any of this is true?” This question has stayed with me for some time. A student, who would only be in my class for less than a month before transferring, asked it during my third year of teaching and my first year teaching a high school history class. My response at […]
Explore how taking bold steps toward inquiry-based learning can ignite curiosity and deepen student engagement. This blog post delves into the power of inquiry to transform traditional classrooms into dynamic spaces of discovery, fostering critical thinking and lifelong learning skills. NOTE: This is a reposting of a post from Kathy that first appeared on Imagine […]
Student engagement is the cornerstone of effective teaching, particularly in inquiry-based classrooms where curiosity and critical thinking take center stage. The principles of inquiry tell us that the more students are invested in exploring big ideas through meaningful conversations, the more authentic their learning experiences become. Successful inquiry thrives on this engagement. Inquiry-minded teachers, in […]
What will school look like in 2044 – 20 years from now? Different? For sure. Unrecognizable? Likely. Better? … I have come to believe two things about this question. AI can be a force for good in education, but we must be focused on the aims of education as we develop AI tools It’s a […]
There’s a TS Elliot poem from a play called The Rock. It’s a mediation on the human condition and our use of data… read on. Choruses from The Rock – T.S. Eliot The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.O perpetual revolution of configured stars,O perpetual recurrence of […]
This is the third post in a series on sources as the Building Blocks of Inquiry. One of the most innovative features of IDM is its interconnectedness. Yes there are separate questions, tasks, and sources. However, a good IDM will always have questions, tasks, and sources that intertwine and rely on each other. To this […]
With the rise of AI, I’m thinking about what it means to be human? How is the human experience lifted up or pulled down by AI? Do you care if it’s a human or a bot? If your interaction with an AI bot meets your human needs, does it really matter if it’s not human? […]
This is the second in my series on sources and the Building Blocks of Inquiry. If you made a list of the top 10 challenges social studies teachers would say they face in the classroom, you may get the list of usual suspects: lack of time, political squabbles over standards, trying to cover all of […]
In her book Humanly Possible, Sarah Bakewell writes about being human as culture, morality, science, optimism, and more. Bakewell opens with a musing on the Roman playwright Terence’s line about humans. “I am human, and consider nothing human alien to me” Bakewell explains that the line was a gag in a play that has come […]
This is the first blog post in a series on sources as the Building Blocks of Inquiry. In the short story mystery, The Copper Beeches, Dr. John Watson inquires to his flat mate, the famous literary detective, Sherlock Holmes, how he can sit for hours on end in wait for the next break in the […]
As an educator venturing into the world of inquiry design for the first time, the experience can feel remarkably similar to learning to play a musical instrument. I recently started relearning to play the piano and quickly realized that much of what I’d learned from childhood lessons were long forgotten. I recalled both the excitement […]
Waking up to the news of the world can at times feel like a dizzying whirlwind. Today, amid the escalating turmoil in Israel and Gaza, I listened to a news interview in which the reporter was asking a former Israeli hostage negotiator their opinion on what the coming days and months would hold for Israelis […]
As I walk down my hallways, I gaze at my students’ Black History Month posters that cover the walls and I realize how I’ve changed since my early years. This month my school’s hallways are decorated with beautiful images that celebrate singers from Cab Calloway to Summer Walker, athletes like Gabby Douglas and Doug Williams, […]
Inquiry at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center When I taught tenth-grade American history, I had a sign on my classroom wall that read Never stop asking WHY. As an eager new teacher, I had plans to utilize inquiry in my classroom and envisioned my students, under my tutelage, asking big questions and making connections […]
In 2019, I wrote about how I began my year pre-assessing student performance on the skills central to the IDM: (1) making evidence-based arguments. As we approach the second half of the school year, I want to share new insights for preparing students to engage with inquiry. After 2019, and in response to the impact […]
“We inherit our history.” It was a phrase I often used to begin my year in the hopes of sparking student agency and making history relevant. But as an early teacher in social studies and ELA, misconceptions about the importance of authentically investigating history filled my brain. I knew I wanted my students to engage […]
The first time I encountered inquiry I was immediately hooked. As a novice teacher, I knew that I wanted my curriculum to be relevant, responsive, and sustaining, and I knew I wanted to attend to those resource pedagogies through asking questions. I knew that I needed to plan my course backwards, starting with big ideas, […]
I learned about the Inquiry Design Model and C3 Framework as a first-year teacher. At that time, I was working with MaryBeth Yerdon and she brought up the IDM, C3 Teachers, and the C3 Framework at a department meeting. MaryBeth learned about inquiry the previous year at a district-wide professional development. Her enthusiasm about inquiry […]
In classrooms, we use inquiries to deepen student understanding of content and to sharpen student skills towards making evidence-based arguments, asking important questions, and taking informed action. In the past, I’ve worked with teachers on adopting the language of inquiry, not only as they learn to create and deploy inquiries, but as general praxis. In […]
I recently zoomed with Nick Stamoulacatos, Supervisor of Social Studies at Syracuse City School District and one of the writers on the article “Countering the Past of Least Resistance” in that latest Social Education. We talked about Syracuse City Schools inquiry initiative and the inquiry loop featured in the article. Can you give me a […]
Image of New York State Archives and Museum in Albany, New York Making connections with cultural centers offers educators a measure of expertise outside their own content knowledge and pedagogical skill. Doing so also offers valuable resources that can be used to help bring history to life. These advantages suggest why connections with cultural centers […]
As I recently waited to pick up my child from school, I noticed a plaque that said the school was built in 1939 as part of the New Deal Works Progress Administration. I had walked by this sign several times and never noticed. Putting on my teacher hat, I thought about the many questions this […]
The following interview with Kathy Swan, SG Grant, and John Lee by Rozella Clyde was previously published in the 2021 November/December edition of Social Education Q. What were your original goals when you began working on the C3 Framework? A. When we first started working on the C3 Framework 10 years ago, we were responding […]
As a social studies educator I have heard all the excuses as to why social studies is not a priority within our elementary school classrooms. “There isn’t enough time.” “We need to focus on reading and math skills.” “Social Studies isn’t tested so it really doesn’t matter.” These excuses are gut wrenching and disheartening, because […]
When Inquiry Hits a Nerve I recently read Isabel Wilkerson’s bestselling book, Caste: The Origins of our Discontents. I found Wilkerson’s argument intellectually stimulating and began to think about how I could incorporate her book into social studies curriculum in central Kentucky. There are many challenges to incorporating modern scholarship into secondary social studies. Will […]
Elementary classes have a lot of curricula competing for airtime. Reading, math, writing, and many other vital and worthy topics fill the day. During a packed day, how can social studies inquiry fit into the schedule? Moreover, students get worn down and weighed down with everything they are expected to learn from the disciplines. Sometimes […]
Last month, I zoomed with the two teachers—Meghan and Andrew—who helped write the Social Education article Zooming Inquiry last Fall. I checked in to see how their thoughts on zooming inquiry has changed since they first published the article and hear stories from the trenches of teaching social studies through inquiry during a pandemic. In […]
We began this COVID season with a group of teachers generating a set of compelling questions. What is the balance between freedom and security? Will a virus heal the partisan divide? How will disease change the world? When this list of questions was first published, no one knew if we could answer them but, like […]
Who would think helicopters flying over your house would lead to an inquiry about slavery, the cotton industry and the Panic of 1837? Then again, it is 2020. I live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania near the iconic Philadelphia Museum of Art. The “Art Museum” is a gathering place for celebrations, running up the “Rocky” steps and […]
The Kentucky Derby conjures up images of large hats, funny suits and galas for those who are in the upper echelon of economic status in America. Each year, tens of thousands flock to the biggest and most prestigious horse track in the world by many estimates. However, the history and systemic racism that has helped […]
“Are you in touch with your emotions?” Can we create a much deeper understanding for middle schoolers on the Rules of Reliability by making sourcing and contextualizing more of a social-emotional learning experience? The C3 Framework has done an exceptional job in creating a blueprint for teachers to follow that emphasizes sourcing and contextualizing, while […]
Hello! My name is Nada Wafa, and I’m excited to share with you more of what C3Teachers has to offer. We would like to present our new organizational C3 Global hub on C3Teachers.org, featuring a variety of global inquiries that can be used year-round to build students’ critical thinking, awareness, and understanding about global issues, […]
November’s annual Native American Heritage Month and the national holiday of Thanksgiving are times when many educators across the country turn their focus to lessons about Native peoples. At the National Museum of the American Indian, we receive many requests during November from teachers and parents looking for advice and resources to help them teach […]
As I opened this school year, I decided to take stock of old procedures I follow, as well as my long term plans for the year around inquiry. After spending 5 days this past summer working on inquiry design in both a C3 summer institute and at the district level, it occurred to me it […]
No one ever said that it would be easy to help produce the next generation of civic-minded citizens especially considering, as educators, our job is also to help morally shape and ethically balance their young minds. I think that most of us never anticipated the complexities surrounding the true tests associated with being a twenty-first […]
Where’s the time for inquiry? You may have your students do Inquiry Design Model inquiries throughout the year or you may do one a semester. If you are just entering the inquiry world, you may not have done any before! In Kentucky, my home state, new social studies standards have been adopted that support inquiry […]
Author’s note: In a previous blog I shared 45 options for Taking Informed Action. This post builds on those ideas. I am happy to share with you two learning experiences I participated in this summer. Although not intentionally related (one happened in mid-June and the other at the end of July), the two events intersected […]
Through deep inquiry! Inquiry learning empowers students to ask deep questions and do historical research that matters to them. No one debates the value of inquiry design in education, but teachers are busy and are often focused on designing inquiry lessons that are specifically geared toward their district’s standards. Teachers often lack the time to […]
One of the more difficult parts of writing inquiries is often crafting a compelling question. As teachers, we ask questions every day. We ask essential questions to help students address “essential” content. We ask supporting questions to help break up complex tasks and check for understanding. A compelling question’s role is different. In inquiry learning, […]
“You want to stand out, you want to make a difference? Rafe Katchadourian’s mother asks inquisitively, as he sits contemplating his next move in the trailer ”Middle School the Worst Years of My Life”, based on James Patterson’s best-selling book. “Think outside-the-box …,” she constructively advises him, as Flo Rida’s “ Welcome to My House” […]
Starting with Inquiry: A Need for Change: As a new administrator in an urban public school in New Jersey, I began my journey into Social Studies curriculum reform with a fundamental question: How do we effectively implement the New Jersey Social Studies Disciplinary Practices in a way that is engaging,
It was fantastic to read this recent article published in Social Education, Teaching to a Better Test: Using the Inquiry Design Model to Reframe State-Mandated Assessment in Social Studies, which describes Virginia’s innovative spirit when it comes to state required testing in social studies. My excitement flows from multiple origin
Engaging with inquiry in the social studies classroom can feel like stepping onto a tightrope—balancing time, standards, and student needs all at once. But here’s the thing: you don’t have to dive headfirst into a full-scale investigation to get students curious and thinking critically. Small, manageable inquiry moments can transform
I’ve been using the C3 Inquiry Design Model (IDM) for over a decade. Generally speaking, I’ve felt successful and have shared my best practices with others in the field. But despite my students’ success in producing rich products from their work on formative performance tasks, arguments, and taking informed actions,
“How do we know any of this is true?” This question has stayed with me for some time. A student, who would only be in my class for less than a month before transferring, asked it during my third year of teaching and my first year teaching a high school
Explore how taking bold steps toward inquiry-based learning can ignite curiosity and deepen student engagement. This blog post delves into the power of inquiry to transform traditional classrooms into dynamic spaces of discovery, fostering critical thinking and lifelong learning skills. NOTE: This is a reposting of a post from Kathy
Student engagement is the cornerstone of effective teaching, particularly in inquiry-based classrooms where curiosity and critical thinking take center stage. The principles of inquiry tell us that the more students are invested in exploring big ideas through meaningful conversations, the more authentic their learning experiences become. Successful inquiry thrives on
What will school look like in 2044 – 20 years from now? Different? For sure. Unrecognizable? Likely. Better? … I have come to believe two things about this question. AI can be a force for good in education, but we must be focused on the aims of education as we
There’s a TS Elliot poem from a play called The Rock. It’s a mediation on the human condition and our use of data… read on. Choruses from The Rock – T.S. Eliot The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.O perpetual revolution of
This is the third post in a series on sources as the Building Blocks of Inquiry. One of the most innovative features of IDM is its interconnectedness. Yes there are separate questions, tasks, and sources. However, a good IDM will always have questions, tasks, and sources that intertwine and rely
C3Teachers.org facilitates open collaborative conversations among teachers as they tinker with their own instructional practice as it relates to the C3 Framework.
If you are interested in offering more professional development opportunities, rethinking or redesigning your social studies curriculum, we’d love to talk.
