Discrepant Event Books William C. Bruce Associate Dean and Professor College of Education and Psychology Phone: (903) 566-7048 e-mail: wbruce@uttyler.edu http://www.hometreemedia.org Fax: (903) 566-7036 Brought to you by Home Tree Media: Home Tree Media Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! Two books sharing one title and on one CD-Rom The titles and the new versions of Learning Social Studies Through Discrepant Event Inquiry, Alpha Publishing Co., Inc., Annapolis, Maryland, 1992, by Bruce and Bruce AND Learning the Inquiry Method: A Learner's Permit to Inquiry: Student Workbook (ISBN 1565060032), Alpha Publishing Co., Inc., Annapolis, Maryland, 1992, by Bruce and Bruce Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive!. Now, you never need to order the Bruces' earlier discrepant event books from book resellers. The old discrepant event books are often confused with the new discrepant event books. Book resellers sell the old book, Learning Social Studies Through Discrepant Event Inquiry, in the $130.00 range. For less than half that price you can order the updated version: Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! ISBN: 0970480156. You can order the Bruces' titles from Amazon.com, other online bookstores, and now when you search under Entertainment, Target online. http://www.target.com/ Find the lowest price for Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! ISBN 0970480156! Powered by Amazon Customer Reviews of Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! If you really want to reach your students, November 15, 2005 Reviewer: J. T. Wilbanks "Tara" (Longview, TX USA) "I am a former student of Dr. Bruce and by accident read Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! in preparation and review before my class was to do an in-class model of discrepant event. I thought Dr. Bruce was a little out there until I began to read the book... I realized that this man is not only brilliant - but he is a gifted and wonderful teacher - heart and soul. The ideas that are presented in this book are "out of the box" and they are not the same old boring teaching that all of us have encountered in the public schools. If you want to engage children, challenge them, and get them thinking critically then you will want to read this book and explore for yourself the ideas and models that Dr. Bruce and his wife share in this enlightening and revolutionary book. It is a resource that all school teachers and even parents should have and to use with children. It has the capablility to help an ordinary teacher become an extraordinary teacher." ..an important resource for teachers, May 16, 2004 Reviewer Michael M Yell "yellmm" (Hudson, WI United States) "In the mid eighties I first came across the strategy known as discrepant event inquiry in a book by William and Jean Bruce. Discrepant Event Inquiry is a teaching strategy built around intellectual confrontation. From my senior high government and economic classes to my current seventh grade history classes, it is one of the most motivational teaching strategies that I have ever used. In this strategy, the teacher presents students with a puzzling, paradoxical, or discrepant event/story at the beginning of a lesson. Students ask questions, pose hypotheses, analyze and synthesize information, and draw tentative conclusions while attempting to find an answer to the puzzle. By engaging students in hypothesizing and working together to solve a puzzle, inquiry serves as a strategy for higher order thinking as well as an excellent means of investing student in the content to come. Inquiry is used in order to motivate students to begin thinking about a new unit, idea, or concept that you will be dealing with in your lesson. Discrepant-event inquiry is a natural for social studies, history and science classes. Mindtronics contains descriptions of the strategy and 100 inquiries in the social sciences, history, and science. As teachers know, the Internet provides a new and unlimited opportunity for gathering information for lessons. Mindtronics contains live links to dozens of Internet sites for each discrepant event inquiry. With the 100 inquiries, the live links, and the clear description of the strategy, Mindtronics is an excellent and important resource for the social studies and science teacher." Michael M. Yell 1998 National Social Studies Teacher of the Year National Board Certified Teacher William C. Bruce Associate Dean and Professor College of Education and Psychology Phone: (903) 566-7048 e-mail: wbruce@uttyler.edu http://www.hometreemedia.org Fax: (903) 566-7036 Brought to you by Home Tree Media: Home Tree Media If you think we can assist you, with a customer service, contact us by clicking on the Contact Us link, in our site menu; fill out the Contact form. You'll hear from us soon. Would you like to know more about our main book authors, Dr. William C. Bruce and Jean K. Bruce? For instance: Dr. Bruce, and his wife Jean, first authored a discrepant event book entitled: Learning Social Studies Through Discrepant Event Inquiry. Go to the following URL addresses to learn more about William C. Bruce and Jean K. Bruce through their blogs, too: University of Texas at Tyler, EPP University of Texas at Tyler, CPDT http://www.uttyler.edu/c_i/bruce.htm Free discrepant event lesson, 9-11 Blog: Pay Teachers More Blog: Test Scores

Home Tree Media Introduction to Mindtronics: Science, Social Studies, Inquiry Alive! and Inquiry Alive! Mindtronics! Table of Contents Inquiry Alive Table of Contents Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive!   * CD-ROM: 680 pages     * Publisher: Home Tree Media (March, 2004)     * ISBN: 0970480156     * Average Amazon Customer Review: 5 Stars,       based on 3 reviews. Mindtronics! TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction  / 10 About Inquiry Alive!  / 12 Inquiry: A Quick Overview  / 13 CHAPTER 1 Focusing on the Discrepant Event Module, the Discrepant Event, and the Inquiry Method  / 15 About the Discrepant Event Inquiry  / 17 About the Disciplines  / 18 About the Key Concepts  / 19 About the Problem Statements  / 19 About the Probable Solutions  / 19 About Some Possible Student Hypotheses  / 20 About the Fact Sheets  / 20 About the Reference and Resource Pages  / 21 About the External Links  / 21 About the Grade Levels  / 21 Inquiry Guidelines, Information, References, Resources, Suggestions  / 22 Portable Document Information  / 24 Bibliographic Information  / 24 External Resource Information  / 24 Disclaimers  / 25 About Recommended Texts and the Internet  / 26 More Information about the External Links  / 28 Chapter 2: 100 Discrepant Event Modules LIFE SCIENCE  / 31 Hippity Hoppity Moon Pond Froggy  / 32 A Whale of a Cow Tale  / 37 Mr. Jack and the Bean Stalks  / 43 Death in the Americas  / 48 Cholera  / 53 Wing Wars  / 58 Fire Ant Roundup  / 63 The Biopsy  / 68 A Tree Is a Tree Is a Tree?  / 73 Life on Earth and Mars  / 78 Spooky Mustache Stream  / 83 2184  / 88 PHYSICAL SCIENCE  / 92 Star Power Tower to Spider Raider  / 93 The Titanic Fishing Boats  / 98 The Black Sea  / 103 Kayla’s Silver Ball  / 109 The Mighty Mrs. Jones  / 114 The Case of the Missing Platinum  / 119 Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars  / 124 Losing It  / 129 Tommy’s Typhoons  / 134 The Haircut  / 140 Multiple Universes  / 145 SOCIAL STUDIES  / 149 HISTORY  / 150 The Samurai Crab  / 151 The Humboldt Secret  / 156 The Island of Doom  / 161 Wheels of Life and Death  / 166 Truth Outlasts the Sun  / 171 The Peppered Moth  / 176 Northwest Passage: Dead Men Speak  / 181 Opechancanough  / 187 The Yorktown Surrender  / 192 Scott: Painting Tomorrow's Canvas  / 197 The Holocaust  / 202<br GEOGRAPHY  / 206   The Grove  / 207 Inca Armies  / 212 Recipe for Death  / 217 Ducktown  / 222 The Irrigated Desert  / 227 Double Trouble  / 232 The Netherlands’ Lands  / 237 Lyme's Disease  / 242 Moving  / 247 Laura's Song  / 252 The Last Treasure  / 257 ECONOMICS  / 261 Waka and Balla  / 262 The Lemonade Stand  / 267 The Electric Meter  / 272 A Loaf of Bread  / 277 Bankrupt  / 282 The Winning Number  / 287 Japan's Steel Industry  / 292 Crude Pulse  / 297 The Ninja Turtle  / 303 Labor of Love  / 308 Wealth of Nations  / 313 POLITICAL SCIENCE  / 317 Jefferson and Burr  / 318 Literary Digest  / 323 Standing Bear  / 328 Reapportionment  / 333 Electrical Engineers  / 338 Madeline's School  / 343 Bus Routes  / 348 The Camp  / 353 The Articles  / 358 Milwaukee's Best  / 363 Totalitarianism Vs. Democracy  / 368 PSYCHOLOGY  / 372 Seeing He.art  / 373 Top the Rat  / 378 The Test  / 383 Sharing Trinkets  / 388 Eli's Father  / 393 Jubenol  / 398 Manny's Grades  / 403 The Deck of Cards  / 408 Milwaukee IQ's  / 413 The Ice Bath  / 418 Violence In Media  / 423 SOCIOLOGY  / 427 Baseball  / 428 Saudi Arabia  / 433 The Star Teacher  / 439 Isabelle  / 444 Views from the Other Side  / 449 Hands to Work, Hearts to God  / 454 Holly Elementary  / 459 Summer in Phoenix  / 464 Taught to Read  / 469 Italian Immigration  / 474 BaFa  / 480 ANTHROPOLOGY  / 484 The Swastika  / 485 style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(192, 192, 192);"> The Outhouse  / 490 Bird Dances  / 495 Seal Hunting  / 500 The Tuna  / 505 Cheating  / 510 Homo erectus  / 515 The Hopi  / 521 We Grow too Accustomed to the Dark  / 526 The Dinner   / 531 Evolution  / 536 Inquiry  / 540.....Acknowledgments  / 541.....Biography/542.....Index  / 543-555 ARTWORK and GRAPHICS Typhoons  / 134 The Samurai Crab  / 151 Home Tree Media

Table of Contents Home Tree Media Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! H T M HOME TREE MEDIA Inquiry Alive! William C. Bruce and Jean K. Bruce TABLE of  CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 8 Bud Abbot and Lou Costello About Inquiry Alive! and About Mindtronics! 11 CHAPTER 1  13 Why? Sample Discrepant Event: Trees (a) (b) (c) 13, 14, 16 Inquiry: Past, Present, and Future 17 Sample Discrepant Event: Samson and Delirium 17 CHAPTER 2  27 The Inquiry Lesson: Syntax Sample Discrepant Event: Samurai Sample (a) 27 IT 28 Inquiry Outline Process 29 Metacognition: Thinking about Thinking 30 Rules of the Inquiry Lesson 30 Classroom Environment 32 Presenting the Discrepant Event 1 33 Presenting the Discrepant Event 2 34 Discrepant Event Inquiry Dialogues 34-35 Sample Discrepant Event: Samurai Sample (b) 35 Discrepant Event Inquiry Dialogues 35 Formulating the Problem Statement 36 Discrepant Event Inquiry Dialogues 36-37 Directing Students toward Yes and No Questions 38 Discrepant Event Inquiry Dialogues 38-40 Handling Reference Materials 40 Discrepant Event Inquiry Dialogues 41-42 Verifying the Discrepancy through Questions About Objects, Events, Conditions and Properties 43 Discrepant Event Inquiry Dialogues 44-45 Handling Theory Questions 46 Discrepant Event Inquiry Dialogues 46-47 Finding Evidence to Support a Theory 48 Discrepant Event Inquiry Dialogues 48-50 Guiding Experimental Questions 50 Discrepant Event Inquiry Dialogues 50-52 Conducting Formative Conferences 53 Discrepant Event Inquiry Dialogues 53 Leading Formative Summarization 54 Discrepant Event Inquiry Dialogues 54-55 Handling Partial Answers to the Problem Question 56 Discrepant Event Inquiry Dialogues 56-57 Providing Hints 58 Discrepant Event Inquiry Dialogues 58 Developing Metacognition 59 Discrepant Event Inquiry Dialogues 60-61 CHAPTER 3  63 Integrating Inquiry into Instruction 63 Sample Discrepant Event: Doubts about General Dowding 66 The Big Event 67 Content 1 (abridgment) 69 Effective Teaching 1 (abridgment) 70 Life Skills 1 (abridgment) 70 Methods 1 (abridgment) 71 Content 2 72 Introducing Units with Discrepant Events 72 Sample Discrepant Event: Death on the Trail 72 Using Discrepant Events for Mid-units 74 Sample Discrepant Event: Cancer Kills 74 Closing Units with Discrepant Events 75 Sample Discrepant Event: Rags to Riches? 75 Effective Teaching 2  77 Anticipatory Set 77 Sample Discrepant Event: Opaque Opinions 78 Maintaining Focus with Discrepant Events 79 Sample Discrepant Event: Baseball Bugs 81 Motivating with Discrepant Events 82 Sample Discrepant Event: Seeing Heart 85 Facilitating Transfer with Discrepant Events 87 Sample Discrepant Event: Killer Bear 87 Increasing Retention through Discrepant Events 89 Sample Discrepant Event: Bird Dances 89 Life Skills 2 90 Developing Question Skills through Inquiry 91 Sample Discrepant Event: Two 91 Practicing the Scientific Method through Discrepant Events 92 Sample Discrepant Event: Vanishing Salt and Pepper 93 Metacognition and Discrepant Events 94 Sample Discrepant Event: Lyme 94 Methods 2 94 Social Studies Projects Built around Discrepant Events 95 Sample Discrepant Event: Too Crude 95 Discrepant Event Games 95 Sample Discrepant Event: Uncloaking Coats 96 Discrepant Events as Sponge Activities 96 Sample Discrepant Event: To Bus or Not to Bus 97 Heterogeneous Groups and Discrepant Events 97 Sample Discrepant Event: Family Night 98 Discrepant Events Introduce Directed Reading Activities 99 Sample Discrepant Event: Taught to Read 100 Reference List 102-105 Supplemental Reading 106-109 Index 110 Acknowledgments 112 Photographs: Superduper Sport Shoe 18 Authority Addict Bug 21 Tools 26 Japan Inland Sea Crabs, Heike 28 Sea Tragedy 39 Plain Crab 41 Empty Tank 43 Treasure Chest 55 Wrestlers 56 Peace Dove 57 Sun and Clouds 58 The Thinker 61 World 62 Brain 63 Happy Face 64 Assorted Graphics 65 The Big Event 69 Zydeco Bear 71 Bulletin Board with Students 73 Birthday Cake 76 Black Bat 79 Yin and Yang 86 Transfer Truck 86 Ice Tea 90 Hanging Clothes 96 Sponge Bug 96 D.E. Graphic 99 Book with Feather 100 Liberty Bell 101 Inquiry Alive! Introduction William C. Bruce and Jean K. Bruce Lou Costello said to Bud Abbot: "Heyyyyyyy Aaaaaaaabbott, where do you find clues?" Bud Abbott said to Lou Costello: "Hey, Lou, where do you find clues?" Lou Costello said: In the clue's closet. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were comedians. Many people have seen Abbott and Costello on television reruns. Abbott and Costello made millions of dollars starring in movies. You’ve probably seen one of their movies from the 1940s or 1950s. What made us laugh when Abbott and Costello performed? Robert Provine, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of Maryland, has been busy trying to find out, scientifically, all about laughter. In Provine’s study of laughter, Provine helps us see laughter with fresh eyes, so writes Steven Johnson, Discover, (VOL. 24, NO.4) April 2003. Provine has found that humans laugh, in part, out of controlled incongruity: you anticipate x, but y happens instead. When we laugh, it starts out feeling good. Physiologically, however, it places tension on us, closely imitating a fight-or-flight response resulting from fear. We receive a shot of adrenaline and other hormones that influence our blood pressure, heart rate, metabolism, and respiratory hyperventilation-like reactions. After we laugh, we profit by the social bonds we make. Some scientists believe laughing heightens our immune systems. Evolution is about the survival of the fittest; we’ve all read that phrase for many years. So, why would laughing help us survive? Laughing is good for us because it helps us share. It’s a social thing. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello did a comic act about a closet for clues. Now, imagine inspecting your own clue’s closet. The answers to life's problems hang smack in your clues closet. You open doors and pick clues. Right? Doomed or blessed by the quest for answers to life’s problems, we venture to solve the unknown. Or do we? Our human problem solving process remains a somewhat mysterious process in itself. The way humans use problem solving brings struggles that focus our attention on the Real and the Unreal. Doubts and our personal doctrines of belief require us to seek proof of the Real and Unreal. Right? Wrong! Unless you possess a thirst for knowledge—that old, I have to know this sensation—even the best-outfitted clue’s closet in the world fails to instigate learning. Your students thirst for knowledge. You stimulate your students’ learning. You and your students practice critical thinking. A kindled spark compels your students to search for answers. You light the way for your students. You light the way for students lacking the ability to reason logically. You light the way for students needing philosophical or analytical skills and imagination. You light the way for students lacking the spark setting humans apart from worms. You help students develop a questioning mind. How do you help your students find their lost curiosity? Poet Annie Dillard, sometimes lost in the woods at Tinker Creek, helped lost students of nature and consciousness in her poetry Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek. Charles Dickens helped students by giving his views of a cruel, industrialized, lost society, notably in his novel Hard Times. Dillard and Dickens, seemingly universes apart, share universal threads; those threads weave through their work twining around the soundness of seeing the unseen. From the beginning to the end of Dickens' and Dillard's books their common sense and haunting reflective eyes hold us and free us, and our minds demand us to respond to the questions Dillard and Dickens raise from our own Lost and Found. Dillard wrote: It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance... I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. After you’re lifted and struck, you’ll never again think that the world offers nothing new—that everything’s old, jaded. Using inquiry to teach and to learn extends your mind to the type of wide-awake life Dillard wrote about and observed. Inquiries blur,and then sharpen your insight. When you use inquiry methods you live struck with new strengths and abilities, to taste, to touch, to hear, and to think, things you cannot wait to share. As through the eyes of a poet, when you teach and learn through inquiry, you see the ordinary, change into images that hit you as if seeing Moses part the sea. Critic Edmund Wilson wrote about Charles Dickens' novel Hard Times. The story, Hard Times, is the frightful world that lies between the classroom and the circus, and is always present to haunt us and to make us better. What did Wilson mean by his statement comparing schools and circuses? A school functioned as a factory, dehumanizing students, a disguised fact, in Dickens' day; but Dickens revealed the shameful conditions. The circus, in Hard Times, found and returned humanity. Children in Dickens' era suffered most of all. A greedy, unchecked, society ruled. This tightfisted society denied the hope of children, denied their dreams, and denied a questioning mind. Manacles were mindforg’d. Do you see a lack of protection for a child’s questioning mind in today’s society? What do we do to unshackle a student’s minds? We use inquiry. We make time for our student to dig out discrepant event answers until they progress as critical thinkers. Inquiry Alive! energizes problem solving, constructive snooping, and widens your closets of clues.  Inquiry Alive! stokes mental embers.  Inquiry Alive! energizes our Lost and Found. Why? As long as human questions carry relevant meaning, our human brains demand answers; we hope. That question and answer passion slowly vanishes though, when questions clank cold and meaningless. It’s up to you, the teacher, or mentor, to remove the manacles. How do we remove manacles mindforged? Questions. Ask questions invoking curiosity. Awaken your students’ thirst for questions; answers fall into place. Debatable, crazy, as that concept would have seemed to a factory owner in Charles Dickens’ day, our innate questioning mind delivers to us another reason to believe in the power of discrepant events. The discrepant event inquiry remains unequaled for its capacity to expand a student’s reasoning dexterity. Discrepant event inquiry is one way to revitalize education. Acknowledge and nourish your inquiring mind: you will find the fire, for truth and wonder, Charles Dickens and Annie Dillard Lost and Found. You will also find out about inquiry teaching and learning. You will see that like laughter, inquiry brings a state of mind we all seek, satisfaction. An inquiry fills the same natural void it filled for our ancient human ancestors, to solve discrepancies, together, mainly when we: anticipate x, but y happens instead. The inquiry method also rings a bell with humans, as humor rings a bell. Humans intuitively use humor and inquiry as allies showing us that we think of our lives outside our judgments, our common sense, and our emotions. Humor and inquiry maximize our lives through our opinions, our logic, and our sensations, and are equally important, for they tie and give feedback, order, and true meaning to our outward connections during interactions. Like humor, inquiry learning helps us get in touch with our own viewpoints and the viewpoints of others. People often traveled many miles to hear Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. The Abbott and Costello comedy routines surprised the listener. It’s comes of little surprise to William C. Bruce, the coauthor of Mindtronics! that after thirty-four years of teaching inquiry, students and teachers still say: Let’s do inquiry more! Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! * CD-ROM: 680 pages * Publisher: Home Tree Media (March, 2004) * ISBN: 0970480156 * Average Amazon Customer Review: 5 Stars, based on 3 reviews. Home Tree Media If you think we can assist you, with a customer service, contact us by clicking on the Contact Us link, in our site menu; fill out the Contact form. You'll hear from us soon. Would you like to know more about our main book authors, Dr. William C. Bruce and Jean K. Bruce? For instance: Dr. Bruce, and his wife Jean, first authored a discrepant event book entitled: Learning Social Studies Through Discrepant Event Inquiry. Go to the following URL addresses to learn more about William C. Bruce and Jean K. Bruce through their blogs, too: University of Texas at Tyler, EPP University of Texas at Tyler, CPDT http://www.uttyler.edu/c_i/bruce.htm Free discrepant event lesson, 9-11 Blog: Pay Teachers More Blog: Test Scores Did you miss these pages? Home Tree Media Links: * First five links are teacher Super Sleuth Links The Sherlock Sleuth Discrepant Event Inquiry Diary Notes to Discrepant Event Super Sleuth Teachers "The game's afoot!"Teacher Links "The game's afoot!"Teacher Links 2 "The game's afoot!"Super Sleuth Award Discrepant Event: The Samurai Crab Quick Discrepant Event: Guns, Germs, and Steel Discrepant Event: Life on Earth and Mars Discrepant Event: The Titanic Fishing Boats Discrepant Event about oil prices: Crude Pulse Discrepant Event about oil prices/Extra links: Crude Pulse Discrepant Event: Mad Cow Discrepant Event Extra Links: Mad Cow Discrepant Event: Immigration Discrepant Event: Immigration/Extra Links Website Links Relating to the U.S. Presidency: Review President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: National Freedom Day, The Gettysburg Address, and Rosa Parks The US Constitution Check Out Our Teacher Books Table of Contents for Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! 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