C3 and IDM in practice in Winston-Salem Forsyth County Schools

Inquiry is on the move in Winston-Salem North Carolina schools where teachers and students are making some sweet applications of the Inquiry Design Model – literally!

Students in Rebecca Craps 5th grade classroom just completed an inquiry on the economics of chocolate and yes it came with the real thing. You can read more about this inquiry activity on the Winston-Salem Forsyth Schools website HERE.

This inquiry and others in North Carolina schools are the product of professional development activities lead by Dr. Emma Thacker at Wake Forest University. In collaboration with Andy Kraft, the Winston-Salem Forsyth Schools program manager for social studies, Dr. Thacker and her colleague at Wake Forest, Dr. Adam Friedman, are training teachers to use the Inquiry Design Model (IDM). Their efforts are paying off as teachers in Winston-Salem and beyond are picking up IDM and adapting it for their classroom.

Winston-Salem Forsyth Schools has already published a collection of inquiries created from professional development activities last year and more are in the works. Elementary inquiries are available HERE. High school inquiries are HERE.

And, the work continues this year as teams of teachers in all grades from 1st to 12th grade are developing new inquiries. To initiate this inquiry development process, teachers attended professional development workshop this past summer (2015) to learn more about the C3 Framework and IDM. Teachers left the workshops organized and empowered to develop their own inquiries and are charging ahead to complete their design process and implement in the classroom. District leaders and teachers are also presenting at the state social studies conference to spread the word about their successes using inquiry and IDM in the classroom.

We look forward to seeing what’s next for the ambitious teachers and leaders in Winston-Salem Forsyth Schools!