The GED as Project materials you find in the printed volumes and on our website are written for the GED-level learner, using the PA Practice Test items. If you need material suited more to your class’ needs and ability level, we encourage you to write your own Inquiry Activities using your own materials. Material may be pulled from a workbook, from the internet, or, to be most effective, from authentic materials that daily surround your learners in their homes and at work, such as newspaper stories, instruction sheets at work, charts, graphs, and maps.

No two Adult Education classes are alike. Dealing with the challenges of multi-level classes, as well as the learners’ needs to pursue a variety of content areas in their studies, means that instructors must look to a variety of sources to develop effective lessons. The inquiry process is a powerful tool to help both instructor and learners at any level.

Be sure to refresh your knowledge of good facilitation, asking good questions, setting up and managing a facilitative classroom, and small group dynamics by scanning GED as Project Introduction: Volume #1 (the yellow book). Learning to Think, Learning to Learn by Jennifer Cromley would also be an excellent resource to set up your creative, project-oriented thinking. Your adult learning center office may have this book, or you can find it online at: www.nifl.gov/nifl/fellowship/cromley_report.pdf

The GED as Project case study team at Fairfax County Public Schools & Community Education Program developed the following template to serve as a strategic guide for writing your own activities.

INQUIRY ACTIVITY TEMPLATE FOR ABE CLASSES
Adapted from the GED as Project template

1. IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEM:

The inquiry activity should revolve around answering this question or solving this problem. It should be stated as a problem for the learners to solve and can be followed by some themes or concepts the learners can think about that will help them clarify the problem. They should not solve it yet.

2. BECOMING FAMILIAR WITH THE PROBLEM:

This step should lead learners to retrieve their prior knowledge related to the problem; to organize what is already known; and to acquire new knowledge about the problem. For example, in this step, you might ask them to discuss what they already know; to restate the question; to decide which facts might be helpful to break the problem down into smaller pieces or steps; to do some research about sources of information that they might use; or to explain the situation to each other.

3. PLANNING, ASSIGNING AND PERFORMING TASKS:

Learners do the work and reach a conclusion about the problem (answering the question or solving the problem that is stated in Step 1). They work in pairs, small groups, or individually.

4. SHARING WITH OTHERS:

Learners report to the larger group what they did in Step 3 and their results.

5. REFLECTING, EXTENDING, AND EVALUATING:

The questions in this step give learners an opportunity to think about what they’ve done and get the most out of it. Questions are designed to: transfer knowledge gained beyond the scope of this specific problem; state personal relevance of the problem; make it meaningful; make up a similar question themselves; reflect on what they learned and on the ways in which they learn; evaluate what skills they learned or practiced; and assess whether they need more practice.

 

For Example- Thinking it Through:

Suppose you have a multi-level ABE class. What follows is a guide to create your own Inquiry Activity from, as an example, a Social Studies passage in your ABE workbook. You may type up the Inquiry Activity to hand out to the class, or you may simply post the Inquiry Process template poster and deliver the lesson orally using the 5-step problem solving method.

1. Decide on a passage or visual that supports your lesson.
   
   
2. Decide which questions or activities you want to use with the passage or visual. These may either be provided in the book, or you may make up your own. The questions can be as long or short as you wish, depending on how long you want the class to take to work on this IA. On the average, IAs take about an hour, depending on the extensions you use to add breadth and depth to the learning. You can have the learners simply turn to material in the book, or you can copy it onto a handout and make changes.
   
   
3. Creating the Steps:
   

   Step 1: Identifying the Problem.
   Provide questions that direct the class to scan the passage and figure out what type of document it is. Have them scan the questions or work that follows the passage, but remind them not to answer the questions yet.

   Step 2: Becoming Familiar with the Problem.
   Provide questions for the learners to a) check the passage for vocabulary words they are unsure of, and discuss these as a whole group or in their small groups. Have dictionaries and a thesaurus available. b) Have them share or write down what they know about the subject in the passage. Where have they seen something like this before? (Build on their prior knowledge in this step.)

Step 3: Doing the Work and Step 4: Sharing.
Have the class do the work by themselves, guessing if they have to. Your class should be a safe environment in which they can make mistakes. After the independent work is done, let them form into small groups or pairs to check out their answers with each other. Finally, let each small group share and compare their answers and how they arrived at these answers with the whole group. Make sure they are thinking about thinking and about how they learn.

If there are discussions that show the learners are very confused and have gone far enough trying to figure out the answer for themselves, step in and offer a burst lecture to clarify or further explain with material to provide the context they need. Provide a mixture of direct instruction and facilitation throughout this Inquiry Activity as needed.

Step 5: Reflecting, Extending and Evaluating.
Reflection: Here, you should ask questions about what the class learned.

Extending: Then, extend their learning to a new situation by asking them to do an additional task that uses their new knowledge. Use additional resources, other media, or authentic material to keep things interesting and real-life oriented. Use material from another subject area if you can, to reinforce integrated learning and to develop critical-thinking skills.

Evaluating: Finally, ask the learners if this process worked for them. How might they find it useful in their studies, on the job, or in the community?

 

Please see sample teacher-made inquiry activities developed by local programs. You may download them below (Word document) or write your own!