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Inquiry learning is essential to social studies because it engages students in the class curriculum and helps them better understand the material their studying. It can also be integrated in almost any other discipline such as math, science, social studies, and English. The benefit of inquiry learning is that it allows students to question the material their studying and gets them involved in the lesson plan. Megan Putnam’s chosen article, Creating Thinking and Inquiry Tasks that Reflect the Concerns and Interests of Adolescents, stresses the importance of allowing students to choose the class activity because it often increases their interest for that topic and engages them to the lesson plan. The article states that students tend to learn more when they work in small group inquiry rather than individual inquiry. Group inquiry exposes students to different points of views and they learn from their peers’ experiences and explanations.
Moreover, the article includes a variety of inquiry learning examples that teachers can integrate in their classrooms. For example, as a teacher I can let my students select a movie that deals with historical events then have them research information about that particular time period. Students will have the opportunity to research from a variety of sources such as textbooks, encyclopedias, the internet, and the movie itself. After watching the movie they will compare and contrast the information they obtained from the different sources. This will teach them how and why its important to question everything they see, hear, and read. By comparing primary, secondary, and tertiary sources, students will acknowledge the many different perspectives that people have of the same event and learn why its important to research from different sources. Students can also post what they learned on their wiki or blog and inform other students why it’s important to critic and analyze everything they come across.
The article also gives explicit examples how teachers can use real world scenarios that people come across on a daily base and turn them to educational lessons or relate them to historical events/issues. The benefit of this activity is that students can connect history or any other social studies subject to current events or their lives. For instance, if a new students, from another country or even state, arrives in your classroom you can have your students work in groups to research information about that students’ country of origin. Therefore, your pupils can better understand the cultural differences and similarities of their new classmate, instead of stereotyping him or her. In addition, students will learn more about a different country while at the same time getting to know their classmate better. Students can also recorded their class presentation on podcast or with a digital camera and show their class what they learned from that country. A class party will also be a great idea because everyone will celebrate the new student’s culture and make him or her feel welcome and appreciates in their new class. Other ways students can use technology is by posting what they learned on their class website and sharing it with other teachers and students.

What would you have done differently or how would you relate social studies to students’ everyday lives in correlation with technology?

Memory, D.M., Yoder, C.Y.,Bolinger, K.B., Warren, W.J. (2004). Creating Thinking and Inquiry Tasks that Reflect the Concerns and Interests of Adolescents. Social Studies, 95 (4), 147-154. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier (AN 14222731).