Imaginative Inquiry: Creating an Expert Team to Ignite Inquiry

This workshop will introduce the methods of Imaginative Inquiry and demonstrate how it is used in K-6 classrooms to ignite inquiry

Learn how to ignite inquiry in your classroom and create engaging curriculum through Imaginative Inquiry and Mantle of the Expert!

Imaginative Inquiry places students at the center of compelling narratives that engage them in deep and purposeful learning. By enlisting them as a team of experts who are given an important task to fulfill, students step into the active role of researchers, problem-solvers and leaders. In this workshop presentation, participants will learn about the pedagogical underpinnings of Imaginative Inquiry, see examples of its use in elementary school classrooms, and discuss how Imaginative Inquiry can be a powerful tool for teaching social studies and social justice.

Developed in the United Kingdom, Imaginative Inquiry is a pedagogy based on the idea that children's imagination is our greatest resource in the classroom. Within a community of inquiry, teachers and students create exciting and meaningful contexts for learning, using conventions of theatre such as point of view, tension, and narrative, to explore curricular objectives. Students are not merely passive observers of the stories of our world, but are collectively invited to take action in the realm of possibility that Imaginative Inquiry provides.