The teacher modulates tasks to take into account conceptual level and whether the students are ready for particular phases to commence, and, impor-tantly, scaffolds the process when needed.
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The following scenarios provide examples of this model in action.
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c e n a r I o Botany In IndIa: a seCondary exaMPleAt the Motilal Nehru School of Sports in the state of Haryana, India, two groups of tenth- grade students are engaged in the study of a botany unit that focuses on the structure of plant life. One group is studying the textbook with the tutorial help of their instructors, who illustrate the structures with plants found on the grounds of the school. We will call this group the presentation- cum- illustration group. The other group, which we will call the inductive group, is taught by Bharati Baveja, an instruc-tor at Delhi University. This group is presented with a large number of plants that are labeled with their names. Working in pairs, Mrs. Baveja’s students build classifica-tions of the plants based on the structural characteristics of their roots, stems, and leaves. Periodically, the pairs share their classifications and generate labels for them.
Occasionally, Mrs. Baveja employs concept attainment (Chapter 6) to introduce a concept designed to expand the students’ frame of reference and induce more com-plex classification. She also supplies the scientific names for the categories the stu-dents invent. Eventually Mrs. Baveja presents the stustu-dents with some new specimens and asks them whether they can predict the structure of one part of the plant from the observation of another part (such as predicting the root structure from the observation of the leaves). Finally, she asks them to collect some more specimens and fit them to the categories they have developed so they can determine how comprehensive their categories have become. They discover that most of the new plants will fit into existing categories, but that new categories have to be invented to hold some of them.
After two weeks of study, the two groups take a test over the content of the unit and are asked to analyze more specimens and name their structural characteristics.
The inductive group has gained twice as much on the test of knowledge and can correctly identify the structure of eight times more specimens than the presentation- cum- illustration group.
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c e n a r I o word IdentIFICatIon skIllsJack Wilson is a year 1 teacher in Cambridge, England. He meets daily for reading instruction with a group of children who are progressing quite well. He is studying how his students attack unknown words. He believes that they do well when they
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sound out words and recognize them as being in their listening– speaking vocabu-lary. For example, when they find war, they are fine. However, a word like postwar appears to stop them. Deciding that they have trouble with morphological struc-tures when elements like prefixes and suffixes add to the root meanings of words, Jack plans the following sequence of lessons.
Jack prepares a deck of cards with one word on each card. He selects words with particular prefixes and suffixes, and he deliberately puts in words that have the same root words but different prefixes and suffixes. He picks prefixes and suf-fixes because they are prominent morphological structures— very easy to identify.
(He will later proceed to more subtle features.) Jack plans a series of learning activ-ities over the next several weeks using the deck of cards as a data set. Here are some of the words:
set reset heat preheat plant replant
run rerun set preset plan preplan
When the group of students convenes on Monday morning, Jack gives several cards to each student. He keeps the remainder, intending to gradually increase the amount of information. Jack has each student read a word on one of the cards and describe something about the word. Other students can add to the description. In this way the structural properties of the word are brought to the students’ atten-tion. The discussion surfaces features like initial consonants, begins with an s, vow-els, pairs of consonants (pl ), and so on.
After the students have familiarized themselves with the assortment of words, Jack asks them to put the words into groups. “Put the words that go together in piles,” he instructs. The students begin studying their cards, passing them back and forth as they sort out the commonalities. At first the students’ card groups reflected only the initial letters or the meanings of the words, such as whether they referred to motion or warmth. Gradually, they noticed the prefixes and how they were spelled and looked up their meanings in the dictionary, discovering how the addition of the prefixes affected the meanings of the root words.
When the students finished sorting the words, Jack asked them to talk about each category, telling what the cards had in common. Gradually, because of the way Jack had selected the data, the students could discover the major prefixes and suffixes and reflect on their meaning. Then he gave them sen-tences using words not in their deck that had the same prefixes and suffixes and asked them to figure out the meanings of those words, applying the con-cepts they had formed to help them unlock word meanings. He found that he had to teach them directly to identify the root word meaning and then add the meaning of the prefix or suffix.
By selecting different sets of words, Jack led the students through the catego-ries of consonant and vowel sounds and structures they would need to attack unfa-miliar words, providing students with many opportunities to practice inductive learning. Jack studied their progress and adjusted the classification tasks to lead them to a thorough understanding and the ability to use their new knowledge to attack unfamiliar words.
The primary application of the model is to develop thinking capacity. However, in the course of developing thinking capacity, the strategies obviously require students to ingest and process large quantities of information. The model can be used in every curriculum area and from kindergarten through high school.
Inducing students to go beyond the given data is a deliberate attempt to increase productive or creative thinking. Inductive processes thus include the creative processing of information, as well as the convergent use of informa-tion to solve problems.
The model causes students to collect information and examine it closely, organize it into concepts, and learn to manipulate those concepts. Used regu-larly, the strategy increases the students’ abilities to form concepts efficiently and also the perspectives from which they can view information.
For example, if a group of students regularly engages in inductive activity, the group can be taught more and more sources of data. The students can learn to examine data from many sides and to scrutinize all aspects of objects and events. We can expect that at first their data will be superficial, but their increasingly sophisticated inquiry will turn up more and more attributes that they can use for classifying the data. Also, if a classroom of students works in groups to form concepts and data, then the groups share the categories they develop, they will stimulate each other to look at the information from differ-ent perspectives. The studdiffer-ents can also learn to categorize categories by build-ing concepts that further cluster those categories.
Another example may serve to pull these ideas together in practical terms.
As we have discussed, sometimes we create and organize data sets for our stu-dents to classify, and sometimes we help them create and organize sets. In the following example we have organized a set from writing samples produced by the students themselves.
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c e n a r I o BuIldIng a data set FroM reaCtIons to a sCene In a FIlM The students have watched a scene from the film Out of Africa in which three new friends amuse themselves with witty conversation. Then the students were instructed to create a sentence about the scene, beginning each sentence with anChaPter three Learning to Learn Inductively 63
adverb. (They are studying the use of adverbs because it was discovered that they are not as comfortable using adverbs as adjectives.)
They opened their sentences in the following ways (the rest of the sentences are omitted to create a focus on the use of adverbs in openings):
1. Profoundly looking into one another’s eyes . . . 2. Intently listening to one another’s words . . .
3. Wonderingly and as if by magic the love began to flow . . .
4. With relaxed and forthright honesty they shared a part of themselves . . . 5. Anxiously the husband watched as his normally taciturn wife . . .
6. Passionately I gazed at my two companions . . . 7. Playfully at first, but with growing intensity . . .
8. Tentatively, like three spiders caught in the vortex of the same web . . . 9. With heated anticipation, the three formed a web of mystery and emotion.
10. Quietly listening they were engulfed by the tale.
11. With awe and a certain wonderment . . .
12. Tenderly, in the midst of warm candlelight, they . . . 13. Skillfully she met the challenge . . .
14. Boldly they teased one another with their mutual love of language.
15. Effortlessly her practiced mind . . .
16. Awkwardly, like children just learning to walk . . .
17. Softly, slowly, but glowing like the candles about them, they negotiated . . . 18. Boldly she drew them into the fabric of her story.
19. Suspended by the delicate thread of her tale . . . 20. Instinctively she took his cue . . .
Before reading further, read the passages, make notes about the attributes of the writing, and classify the sentences. (If you are alone or in a small group studying the model, classify them independently. If you are in a group of eight or more, clas-sify them with a partner. Then share your classifications, discussing the basis each of you used and the attributes you focused on.)
Now, let’s turn to some of the categories developed by our class.
One group classified the sentences by the form of the adverbs, placing single words together (such as profoundly from number 1 and anxiously from 5), phrases together (such as “with relaxed and forthright honesty” from 4), and the single clause (number 19) by itself. A second group reported that it had classified them according to the mood or tone that was evoked. For example, numbers 12, 17, 19, 11, 3, and 7 were placed together because the group members decided that they all shared the creation of a gentle, loving mood, whereas 5 and 16 emphasized the awkwardness of strangers.
The class then used their categories to experiment with writing, changing single words into phrases and clauses and vice versa, substituting words to change
the mood evoked, and so on. For example, one pair experimented with 6, trying
“with passion,” and “passion flowed as I gazed . . . .” Another changed number 8 to “tentatively and spiderlike” and decided the change altered the mood. One changed boldly to skillfully in number 18 and judged that it helped the develop-ment of the mood.
The episode was followed by a foray into several books of short stories, and the members of the class created a data set of sentences in which authors had made use of adverbs. Classifying them, they proceeded to create categories of adverb use by expert writers and to experiment with them in their own writing.
Thus, the phases of the model built on one another to generate more and more complex mental activity and to increase the likelihood that the study of lan-guage would have a yield for their skill in writing. The second inductive activity built on the first as the students added the study of expert writers and tried to learn from them.
The model is adaptable to a wide range of learning styles (see Chapter 20).
When the authors and their associates explored inductive processes with both relatively rigid and flexible students, they found that both groups were able to engage in the inductive process but that the more flexible students made the greatest gains initially. More importantly, they found that practice and training increased effectiveness and that all the students could learn to carry on inductive activity independently.
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c e n a r I o develoPMent oF a unItThis scenario is built around a series of sets built by Sharon Champ, a literacy trainer in the Saskatoon Public Schools. Sharon decided to build a set where sev-eral concepts about syntactic structures of sentences are built in so that they might be discovered as the students build their categories. The objective is to increase the students’ study of sentences and how they are structured to convey particular types of meanings. Let's look at the structural characteristics of 21 of the sentences.
1. In the grass, the spider patiently weaves her web.
2. In the trees, birds gather to eat berries.
3. In the forest, a squirrel leaps from tree to tree.
4. In the space station, the astronauts complete their experiment.
5. In the burrow, the rabbit family nestles together to keep warm.
6. In the cockpit, the pilot carefully checks his instrument panel.
7. In the icy water, a penguin dives and splashes.
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8. Under the sea, large sharks circle the school of fish.
9. Near the trees, lion cubs scamper in the tall grass.
10. Under the water, the diver silently searches for a dolphin.
11. Under the snow, a hungry mouse burrows deep looking for food.
12. Beside the school, two small boys play catch with a bright red ball.
13. Behind the mountaintops, dark storm clouds are gathering.
14. Between the trees, a small monkey wrestles with its mother.
15. Beside the river, a bear cub scrambles on the rocks.
16. Between the rocks, a snake slithers to search for food.
17. On the surface of the pond, a loon floats peacefully.
18. Hidden under leaves, a spotted frog hides from the sun’s brilliant rays.
19. Deep in the forest, a black panther patiently waits to pounce on her prey.
20. High in the sky, the lone eagle glides gracefully.
21. Far below the earth’s surface, molten lava rumbles and boils.
From a formal perspective, each of these sentences contains a prepositional phrase that provides information about where the action takes place. Sharon reasons that if the students can build a category that contains those attributes (prepositional phrases and their attributes and the meaningful content where), they can use the category as they read, looking for structures that provide par-ticular meanings, and as they write, building a tool for giving their readers infor-mation about where.
The rest of the set does not contain prepositional phrases that tell us where:
22. Penguins have huge appetites.
23. This bird is a rockhopper penguin.
24. You would not want to fight a grizzly bear!
25. Clouds come in all shapes and sizes.
26. A blue whale is not a fish.
27. This tough bird is an emperor penguin.
28. The small dog yapped impatiently.
29. In the day, bats sleep upside down.
30. At twilight, bats’ sharp cries fill the air.
31. At night, the owl hunts silently for mice and rabbits.
32. In the winter, most bears hibernate in caves.
33. Some frogs lay their eggs on land.
34. A duck makes its nest in the reeds.
35. The young penguin stays beside his mother.
36. Many desert animals live underground.
37. Many plants and animals live beside lakes.
38. A woman is standing between her children.
39. The woodpecker searches for insects under the bark of the aspen tree.
40. They build their nests on steep, rocky cliffs and hillsides.
41. Snow leopards live high on snowy mountainsides.
42. Yaks live on some of the tallest mountains in the world.
The sentences numbered 22– 42 are mixed with the first 21 as Sharon presents the set to her sixth- grade students. She asks them to look at characteristics of the sen-tences and the kinds of information that is conveyed. She asks them not to focus on specific bits of information (such as where the yak lives) but on general informa-tion conveyed by a particular characteristic of the sentences.
Clearly, this is not the first lesson these students have experienced on sen-tence structure and purpose, but is a part of a long unit dealing with comprehen-sion in reading and ways of conveying information in writing.
What do you think? What categories do you suppose the students formed in their inquiry?