Inquiry & Literacy: Using Authentic Problems and Real Student Conversations to Engage Students

We all want our students to be engaged; we want them to be seen, heard, valued AND captivated by the curriculum. However, as the year goes on, activities like bellringers, team-building exercises, and daily brain breaks become less effective and less engaging, and they don’t generate student excitement about the content of the class. What if it didn't need to be that way? What if curriculum could be authentically engaging? The presenters will share a guaranteed and viable approach to curricular design that centers current, controversial questions; by putting questions that matter at the center of unit design, teachers are empowered to privilege student voice and meaning-making above student compliance.To make school authentic and exciting, we don’t need to ditch the standards or revamp the reading: we need to shift how we think about teaching and learning, including inquiry-based units, discussion modalities that can be applied to any unit, and strategies to enhance student reading, writing, and overall literacy.