ABSTRACT
Inquiry-based instruction holds making meaning as a major learning goal, based on constructivist learning theory. Dialogue with one or more persons is the primary means to socially creating meaning, including interrelating facts and concepts, reading and writing for understanding, and reasoning from evidence. Misconceptions or incomplete learning arise unless teachers build up students' repertoire of effective skills for constructing their own meaning, especially in concert with other learners. All of these strategies help learners build meaning because they must slow down, pay attention, clarify what is uncertain, reread, exchange ideas, put ideas into their own words, and connect new information to what they know. Inquiry demands making meaning together with others and trying to describe, question, and defend what is meaningful and how it occurs. The teacher reads the poem "Balloon Man" and then asks the students to visualize it, talk to their partners about what they saw, draw what they imagined, share the meaning they derived with the group.
