Inquiry and CMP Research

The reasoning behind inquiry based learning is that when students are at the center of their learning, they become more involved and will learn more. Students learn based on their own curiosities, interests, and perspectives. Students are controlling where their learning is headed in a sense because their learning is more organic so the student feels like they are discovering and not being told what they are learning. This process makes learning more enjoyable for the student and helps them to have a greater sense of accomplishment in their learning. I feel that the CMP model is inquiry based because we use the CMP textbooks in the classroom that I am working in now and they are relatively inquiry based. A lot of the lessons are about discovery of concepts. My teacher I am working with is very inquiry based and he only does a small portion of lecturing each day (maybe 3 minutes( and the rest of the learning is done through assignments and activities. Most of his students are doing well and I believe he only has six students failing in all six of his classes. He even had a very impressive student discover a way to easily find a fraction in between two given fractions (add the numerators and denominators together and your resulting fraction will be between the two) that wasn't in the book and neither he or I had ever heard before.