Hands-on but not inquiry: a year 2 science unit
At a school in its third year of MYP, Mr Okafor teaches a six-week year 2 (grade 7) science unit called "Ecosystems". The statement of inquiry reads "Ecosystems are important" and the global context is listed as "orientation in space and time". Lessons begin with a teacher demonstration, then students follow a worksheet with numbered steps to measure light intensity and plant growth; the report template has fill-in-the-blank conclusions. A "wonder wall" in the corner holds 40 student questions collected in week 1, none revisited. In observation feedback the head of school writes "excellent inquiry - students were hands-on throughout". The end-of-unit test is 30 multiple-choice items. Mr Okafor says he would like to give students more choice but worries about covering prescribed content and about two students who "can't handle open tasks".
1. Evaluate this unit against MYP expectations for inquiry. Distinguish genuine inquiry from activity that merely looks active, and identify the design flaws.
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Activity is not inquiry. Inquiry is driven by questions students help to own and by conceptual understanding students construct. Here the sequence is demonstration → prescribed steps → cloze conclusion, which is a confirmatory exercise: the answer is already known and the worksheet supplies the thinking.
Design flaws, in order of seriousness.
- No conceptual frame. "Ecosystems are important" is a topic statement with a value judgement, not a statement of inquiry. It names no key concept, no related concepts and no relationship to be understood, so it cannot generate inquiry.
- The global context is decorative. "Orientation in space and time" does no work in a unit about ecological relationships; it appears on the planner and nowhere in the learning.
- Student questions are collected and discarded. Forty questions on the wonder wall represent the richest inquiry resource in the room. Collecting them without using them teaches students that their questions are decoration.
- The assessment contradicts the pedagogy. Thirty multiple-choice items sample recall only, so even a well-designed inquiry would be pulled back towards coverage.
- No ATL development. No research, thinking or self-management skill is named, taught or reflected on, so students get no support for becoming more independent.
The observation judgement shows the underlying problem: the school's look-fors reward visible activity. Until the observation tool asks what students are deciding, asking and explaining, "hands-on" will keep being mistaken for inquiry.
2. Rewrite the statement of inquiry - specifying key concept, related concepts and global context - and draft factual, conceptual and debateable questions for the unit.
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Statement of inquiry. "Relationships within ecosystems can be modelled to predict how a change in one component affects the whole system."
- Key concept: systems (sciences).
- Related concepts: interaction, environment, adaptation.
- Global context: globalization and sustainability - with an explicit focus on how human decisions alter systems.
The statement is conceptual (it names a relationship), contestable in application (models are imperfect) and teachable within six weeks.
Factual questions (answerable from evidence):
- What are the components of a food web in this habitat?
- How is light intensity measured, and what does the data show?
Conceptual questions (require transfer and reasoning):
- How does a change in one population affect the stability of the wider system?
- What can a model predict, and what does it leave out?
Debateable questions (invite defended positions):
- Should humans intervene to protect a species that is declining because of human activity?
- Is a model that predicts accurately but oversimplifies still useful?
Mr Okafor can seed the wonder wall from these questions and then let student questions cluster around them, so the wall becomes the unit's engine rather than its decoration.
3. Propose how Mr Okafor can move toward guided inquiry across six weeks while addressing content coverage and the two students who struggle with open tasks.
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Move deliberately along a continuum rather than jumping to open inquiry.
- Weeks 1–2 (structured). Keep the plant-and-light practical but change the report: students state a prediction, identify the variable they changed and explain one unexpected result. Content is delivered through direct instruction plus a short "must-know" checklist, so coverage is visible and defensible.
- Weeks 3–4 (guided). Offer a menu of three questions drawn from the wonder wall (for example, effect of crowding, of light, of a predator's removal). Students choose one, use a shared planning template, and justify their method before collecting data.
- Weeks 5–6 (guided toward open). Students extend their investigation or model their ecosystem and present a claim supported by their own data, plus a limitation of their method.
Coverage. Inquiry does not remove the need for taught knowledge; it changes its purpose. The checklist, two short direct-teaching episodes and a brief formative quiz protect content while the investigation carries the concepts.
The two students. Do not lower the cognitive demand; scaffold it. Provide a partially completed planning template, model your own thinking aloud, assign clear group roles, and pre-teach the vocabulary. Name the ATL skills explicitly - research (information literacy), thinking (critical and creative thinking), self-management (organisation) - and give feedback on them, since difficulty with open tasks is usually a skills gap, not a capability limit.
Assessment. Build the summative around criteria A (knowing and understanding), B (inquiring and designing) and C (processing and evaluating), with the multiple-choice items retained only as formative evidence.