Social Studies Lesson Plan

I think this lesson is innovative as it revolves around students asking questions.  Inquiry is becoming more popular to incorporate into teaching and this lesson provides an opportunity for teachers to use inquiry for students to learn about early civilizations.  Students are given many opportunities to ask questions and as many as they wish.  What I truly like about this lesson is during the 'gallery walk', students are not asked to answer any of the questions or judge the questions.  By judging certain questions, those students who asked them may be discouraged from asking questions in the future.  As a result, a more inclusive and respectful environment is established where every students can feel comfortable asking what is on their mind. 

The categorization of questions posed by students is also useful as it may encourage collaboration as to which question best fits into which category.  Seeing other students' questions may spark even more questions that the students may not have thought about earlier.  Thus this idea of asking even more questions throughout is exactly the idea of an inquiry is all about which this lesson includes.  

I think this lesson does a good job of setting the framework for starting an inquiry because it provides images and text for students to formulate their own questions.  It differentiates to students who may have an easier time formulating questions from images rather than text.  Especially for grade 4's, images can keep the students more involved in wanting to look at more, thus providing more opportunities to ask more questions.