Inquiry and Research I-Charts
What is an I-Chart?
An I-Chart is a graphic organizer that is used to help organize note taking, encourage critical thinking, use prior knowledge, and monitor comprehension. I-Charts are a useful tool to provide students with a series of concrete questions that they can use to both gain information and use on their own. Specifically, Inquiry and Research I-Charts combine both prior knowledge and gained information from sources as students research or explore a topic. Inquiry and Research I-Charts help students compile information for further analysis or synthesis.
Why use I-Charts?
One of my beliefs is that because struggling students cannot implicitly complete tasks that either address abstract ideas or ask the student to do something on their own it is the teacher's role to provide help through explicit directions and guided questions. While I may not be able to work with each student individually as they search sources for information, I can provide tools that break the process down into simple, concrete, explicit tasks. From there, I can begin to work with the information they've found. This is why Inquiry and Research I-Charts are a great tool for any classroom. Research is difficult, but by breaking the steps down into manageable pieces, struggling students can work more independently to both find and organize information. While the nature of writing won't be similar in terms of difficulty, the practice of crafting arguments based upon sources is a skill necessary for college. These I-Charts begin to instill this process in a concrete way earlier in their academic career.
Here are some examples of I-Charts:
Inquiry Chart
An I-Chart is a graphic organizer that is used to help organize note taking, encourage critical thinking, use prior knowledge, and monitor comprehension. I-Charts are a useful tool to provide students with a series of concrete questions that they can use to both gain information and use on their own. Specifically, Inquiry and Research I-Charts combine both prior knowledge and gained information from sources as students research or explore a topic. Inquiry and Research I-Charts help students compile information for further analysis or synthesis.
Why use I-Charts?
One of my beliefs is that because struggling students cannot implicitly complete tasks that either address abstract ideas or ask the student to do something on their own it is the teacher's role to provide help through explicit directions and guided questions. While I may not be able to work with each student individually as they search sources for information, I can provide tools that break the process down into simple, concrete, explicit tasks. From there, I can begin to work with the information they've found. This is why Inquiry and Research I-Charts are a great tool for any classroom. Research is difficult, but by breaking the steps down into manageable pieces, struggling students can work more independently to both find and organize information. While the nature of writing won't be similar in terms of difficulty, the practice of crafting arguments based upon sources is a skill necessary for college. These I-Charts begin to instill this process in a concrete way earlier in their academic career.
Here are some examples of I-Charts:
Inquiry Chart
Based upon information from Marissa Mongan