Sparkys Gardening Club Inquiry Project Process Page

Small-Group Inquiry Model For Inquiry Project

Stage
Teacher Role
Student Role
Immerse
Strategy: Mystery Bag.
o Invite curiosity through a
Working in their assigned small
Bring in 6 grocery bags, 1 per group,
motivational approach
o
o
o
o
o

(activity, strategy, text, video,

etc.)
Set up an engaging
environment; surround with
materials
Build background/activate
schema
Modeling and/or thinkingaloud
Strategy work (teaching)
Create passion & curiosity

that have different various gardening

items in it. Packet of seeds, soil, watering
can, gardening gloves, sun, jar of air, and
gardening book. Ask students to try and
come up with an idea of what we will be
talking about next in our science unit.
Afterwards, tell students they will learn
more about this during their
investigation! Introduce the task,
describing that our school uses many
materials that could be recycled.
Strategy: Mystery Photos: Post
photos of gardening in various parts of
the school (close-ups of the plants,
items associated with gardening and the
process of growing plants). Model what
students are to do with these photos.
Students will identify what item is being
shown, what gardening process may be
taking place, and when it would take
place in a gardening timeline. See text
sources for photos used. Students will
then generate questions about the
photos. Engage students in the strategy
with small groups.
Differentiation for ELLs & struggling
learners: Structured cooperative
grouping (heterogeneous groups
planned); share the ideas & sticky notes
after. (Hoyt Chapter 6)

groups, that they will be with

during the final project, students
will look at the mystery items from
their grocery bags in their groups,
generating questions about the
items and record any previous
information they may have about
the items or any questions they
may have.

Groups will fill out sticky notes

with their previous information and
questions they have about the
items in each grocery bag.

Students will look through texts

about plants, what plants need to
survive, and how to garden.

Groups will choose from the list of

resources to what they would like
to investigate first.

Access prior knowledge about plants

and gardening through dialogue and
from small group work with the mystery
photos. Post on Garden Discovery
board in the classroom.
Display texts, images, and articles
around the classroom, inviting students
to look through these and Garden
Discovery bulletin board during free
reading, independent work times, and
for research during project time.
Create a list of different areas around
the school to research where a good
place for a school garden would be?
What do plants need to survive? Will this
place be able to contribute to the needs
of a garden? Place students in their
assigned small groups.
Strategy: Listening/Viewing Guide with
first segment of Video: Think Garden:
Sustainable Gardening. Model with the
first minute of the video. First segment
is about decomposing natural resources
this is segment used for modeling.
Show video to students, stopping
(approx. every min) for group discussion.
Follow with whole class synthesis.
Differentiation for ELLs: Teach notetaking; encourage frequent stopping
points (Hoyt, Chapter 6)
Throughout the unit, teacher will
showcase one poem/song each day,
beginning with, The Needs of a Plant
song and video. Others are included in
the links provided.

Students will watch: Think

Garden: Sustainable Gardening,
downloaded from PBS Learning
Media.
Students will have a Collaborative
Listening/Viewing Guide in front of
them to take notes during the
video.
Small groups will work together
about talk about the notes that
were taken after each minute.
After small groups have shared
notes, students will meet in wholeclass group to organize and
synthesize the information
discovered.

Students are invited to bring in

poems/songs/jokes related to our
topic of plants and gardening.
Students can find their own poems
or use the links available to

 Strategy: Our Living Minute article.

Investigate

o Develop questions
o Students search for
information & discover
answers
o Modeling strategies
(teaching), thinking aloud
o Students collect information
from websites & texts
o Guide discussions

Teacher will model how to introduce the

poem/song and provide a copy of lyrics
to the students. Incorporating music
could be very beneficial to ESL learners
as well.
Strategy: Using Text Features to Help
Locate Essential Information.
(students will mark with sticky notes that
are labeled; bold print, glossary
,heading, index, labels, captions, table of
contents, map)
Model this with a big book in front of class
and then have students get in their small
groups with a different big book and mark
the specific sections.
o Why do we use informational
texts?
o What is non-fiction?
o Why do we need to learn how to
read informational texts?

Strategy: Venn Diagram. Have

students get into their small groups and
use poster board to create a Venn
diagram with reasons why we as a school
should have a gardening club and
reasons why school officials may be
opposed to it. Essentially the benefits vs.
negatives. There may be some
categories that fall under both
categories and will be in the middle of
the two circles.
Model by creating a Venn Diagram and
setting up each category (Benefit,
Negative, Both) and giving an example

discover one that feel the need to

share.
We will take these jokes, songs,
and poems and add them to our
Gardening Discovery bulletin
board in the classroom.
Students in their small groups will
use the labeled sticky notes and
find the corresponding sections.
There may be Big Books that do
not have all categories but that is
okay. This will help students get
better familiar with informational
non-fiction text. They will be using
it a lot during their final
assignment.
Students will fill out worksheet
with a partner using a regular sized
informational text (non-fiction) and
see how many they can find.

Students will engage in the Venn

diagram strategy with the variety of
texts provided for groups to use.

Students will utilize weblinks,

texts, and videos to answer come
up with answers to fill in the Venn
diagram.

Students will utilize weblinks,

texts, and videos to answer the
following questions and store
these in their Inquiry Baskets.
o How will a gardening club

for under each.

Formative Assessment: I will be checking
the Venn Diagrams and making sure that
good ideas are being presented. I will
also be meeting with each small group
one on one to go over their diagrams.
Differentiation for ELLs and struggling
writers: Graphic Organizer, (Vacca,
Chapter 6)

Strategy: Investigation Basket (writing

or drawing facts/ideas that they dont
want to forget specific to their groups
research)
Model questions to lead initial investigation:
o Our baskets will be labeled
Inquiry Group 1-6.
o Why do we think a school
Gardening Club would be
beneficial to Central Elementary?
(Provide healthy food, help the
community, teach students more
about plants, and help the world.
After students have discovered reasons
why they think a gardening club would
be beneficial; they will refer to other
books, web links, and videos to
investigate the following questions:
o How will a gardening club be
beneficial to the school?
o What do we need to start a
gardening club?
o How will we prove our argument?

Teacher will check in with students to

see how their investigation around the
school and reading of other information

o
o

be beneficial to the school?

What do we need to start a
gardening club?
How will we prove our
argument?

Students will utilize weblinks,

texts, and videos to answer
come up with answers to fill in
the Venn diagram.

Coalesce

Stage

o Intensify research: websites,

texts, videos, articles, etc.
o Synthesize information
o Modeling organization and
evaluating sources
o Identify key ideas
o Effective group discussions
o Groups organize their
findings
Teaching strategies to pull
information together

is progressing.
Teacher will explore Inquiry Baskets with
groups.

Teacher Role
Strategy: Word Cloud (words
associated with a main idea). Have
students take their benefit words they
came up with during their Venn diagram
exploration as well as other words
associated with gardening and put them
into a word cloud generator. (Use
http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.ht
m)
Model using the generator with the class
before letting them on their own in their
groups. Give examples of using
investigation basket materials and Venn
Diagrams to create word cloud words.
Differentiation for ELLs and struggling
writers: This reusing of words from other
assignments will help encourage
repetitiveness and other words that are
associated with each other.
Strategy: 3-2-1 Peers in the class will
use the 3-2-1 strategy after listening to
each group to provide presenting group
feedback.
o 3 ideas that they learned that
were associated with the word
cloud.
o 2 words that they had the same
as the presenters.
o 1 question that still have

Student Role

Words will include;

o Benefits of a gardening
club.
o Items associated with
gardening and plants in all
different stages.
Students will present their word
clouds to classmates. This will
allow the students to take into
consideration aspects of
gardening and plants that they
may not have included.
Students should include this word
cloud somewhere in their final
presentation as an intriguing visual
representation of why they want a
gardening club.

Go Public

Stage

o Share learning with others

(who is audience?)
o Demonstrate learning in a
variety of ways
o Reflect, create new
questions
o Learning to be an audience
member
o Self-evaluation

Teacher Role

Students will get back into their small

groups and create a presentation using
Prezi or PowerPoint to present reasons
why they want to create Sparkys
Gardening Club.
o How will a gardening club be
beneficial to the school?
o What do we need to start a
gardening club?
o Where will we put the garden?

o How will we prove our argument?

Differentiation for ELLs and struggling
writers: This project has many
opportunities for those students who
usually struggle in the classroom, to
shine and choose a role in the project to
which they can really contribute their
talents.
Data and numbers
Advertisement
Image Searching
Organizing Resources
Debate
Technology
Design
Writing
Planning
Collaborating
Presenting
Videography

Assessment: Students will be assessed

visually, on their creativity, collaboration,
debate, how well they answered the

Student Role
Students will use their previous
work and answers to create the
presentation.
Students will present answers to
the following four questions in a
creative and informative
presentation.
o How will a gardening club
be beneficial to the school?
o What do we need to start a
gardening club?
o Where will we put the
garden?
o How will we prove our
argument?
Students will vote on which group
has the best presentation and give
reasons why.
The group who wins will present
their presentation and argument to
Principal Mr. Mike Lyons.

assigned questions, and by their

presentation to the class.
10pts: Visually
10pts: Creativity
10pts: Collaboration
10pts: Debate
10pts: Questions Answered
10pts: Presentation