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Teaching Strategies Such as Inquiry Based Learning

As an educator, you should use a variety of teaching strategies and educational materials to encourage children to learn. Inquiry based learning is one of the teaching strategies that focuses on the quest of knowledge by asking questions. Asking questions is the key to learning. Educational materials used for inquiry based learning techniques can be any materials that cause children to question and discover answers. Homeschooling environments can teach effective problem solving skills using this method of teaching and learning.

Teaching strategies that focus on inquiry based learning offer an atmosphere that encourages children to use their five senses to explore their environment, and use the information they gather to build on their knowledge. They become stronger listeners, pay attention to visual details, taste when appropriate, touch and smell items in order to discover and draw conclusions about the world around them. In this method of teaching, your educational materials become everything within your surroundings, and as a result, problem solving skills that are relative to life- and reach far beyond a classroom- are taught.

It has been shown that teaching strategies that focus on memorizing facts from educational materials, such as textbooks and worksheets, are not as effective as the inquiry based learning strategy because details and information will constantly change, and these facts can easily be looked up in reference materials and over the Internet when they are needed. When learning is done by questioning and developing the skills that are required to take learned concepts and apply them in other situations, students are more likely to remember what they’ve learned, as well as use the information for building effective problem solving skills.