The template, the deck, and two guides
The Cornell scaffold the whole session is built around — plus the two documents that turn it from a note-taking sheet into a diagnostic. Yours the moment you register.
The Cornell Notes template
Google Doc · make a copy — the Cues column already carries the disciplinary prompts
Capturing Students’ Thinking — Workshop Companion
PDF · the six roles, what each one reads in the template, and the 90-second intervention
The Cornell Diagnostic Pack
PDF · printable scaffold with pre-populated Cues columns for humanities, science & maths, design & arts
The session slides
Google Slides · the six roles and the chat prompts that ran alongside them
Make a copy of the template and assign it the same day. The PDFs are free to print and share inside your school.
A finished piece of work no longer tells you whether any thinking happened.
You used to read a final draft and know roughly what went on. Now a clean paragraph proves nothing — it could be a student’s best week, or ninety seconds with a chatbot. The answer isn’t detection software. It’s capturing the messy middle while it is still happening. Cornell Notes are the cheapest instrument for that, and most teachers already own them — just pointed the wrong way: at students, as a compliance exercise, instead of at you, as a diagnostic.
In 49 minutes, you'll walk away with
Six roles, walked through in the order a real lesson runs — each one reading the same template differently.
The five-second diagnostic read
A blank Cues column and a Cues column full of hard questions need opposite responses. Telling them apart, at a glance, is the move the whole session is built around.
The pre-populated Cues column
The one thing that stops the template becoming organised copying: you fill the Cues column with disciplinary prompts before students ever see it. Worked versions come ready for humanities, science & maths, and design & arts.
Lost, or thinking? — naming the bottleneck skill
Brian on why only 5–10% of a room will ever say “I don’t know what to do”, and on the bottleneck he found in design: students write long, elaborate description and believe it is analysis. Ioana on the same tell in annotation — underlining with no thinking attached.
The 90-second intervention
What to do with a stuck student instead of rescuing them or walking past — and how the read tells you which they need.
The facilitation script for a silent room
“Read one question from your Cues column.” Students answer from a thought they already wrote down rather than inventing one under pressure — which is what actually lowers the cost of speaking up. Plus the post-session Q&A on what to do when nobody answers at all.
A Cornell scaffold that doubles as your diagnostic dashboard
Not a blank worksheet. The Cues column arrives pre-populated with disciplinary prompts, so what students write back tells you where each of them actually is — while there is still time to do something about it.
Cues & prompts
The hook
What is my initial “I wonder…”?
Disciplinary lenses
What is the source’s perspective? What is the central variable?
Naming the dip
Where is the bottleneck? What is confusing right now?
Connections
What evidence supports this claim?
Notes & evidence
Record your thinking here — transform the information, don’t copy it across.
Summary — the formative checkpoint
Synthesise your notes. What is the big idea, and how has your thinking shifted since the provocation?
Yours as a Google Doc: make a copy and assign it the same day.
This is for you if
- You teach K-12 — IB (PYP, MYP, DP, CP) or any inquiry-based curriculum — and set work students research on their own
- You can’t tell who is genuinely stuck and who has quietly handed the thinking to a chatbot until the deadline
- You want a diagnostic that runs inside a lesson you’re already teaching, not another initiative
- You’d rather watch two teachers work through it than read about it
Skip it if
- You’re looking for AI-detection software or a plagiarism policy — this is about designing tasks where thinking is visible, not policing output
- You want the research literature on note-taking — this is 49 minutes of practice, not a review
Bonus: The Inquiry-Driven Classroom Starter Kit
Register and all five field guides land in your confirmation email — 60+ templates, 50 driving questions, and AI-resilient task designs.
The Lesson Flip Kit
12-page guide · 10 templates
The Differentiated Inquiry Toolkit
10-page guide
The Question Flip
9-page guide · 50 questions
The 30-Second Close
6-page guide
The AI-Resilient Lesson Design Guide
8-page guide
The kit is free either way at edodo.app/download/inquiry-starter-kit — registering just saves you the form.
Ioana Badicioiu
Workshop Leader · Coordinator, The Inquiry-Driven Educator
International educator and inquiry practitioner supporting concept-based learning across the DP and MYP programme.
Brian Jackson
Workshop Leader · The Inquiry-Driven Educator
International educator focused on inquiry-driven practice and disciplinary thinking in the secondary classroom. Brian works with MYP, DP and CP teachers on making quality visible to students — exemplars, criteria, and the questions that drive real thinking.
Ioana and Brian teach this the way they teach everything: you experience the move as a learner first, then plan it as a teacher.
Do I have to watch it in one sitting?
No. It’s chaptered by role, and we remember where you stopped. If you only have ten minutes, “The Designer — preloading the cues” and “The Coach — lost, or thinking?” are the two that change what you do on Monday.
Is it really free? What’s the catch?
Really free, no card. The recording, the template and both PDFs are yours to keep and to share with your department. If you like how Ioana and Brian teach, their seven-week certificate is the deeper version — that’s the whole business model.
Why do I have to give my email?
So we can send you the link again when you want it on another device, and so the template and the guides land somewhere you can find them in a month. One email, unsubscribe any time.
Do I need to teach IB?
No. The examples come from IB classrooms because that’s where Ioana and Brian teach, but nothing in the session depends on an IB programme. It works in any curriculum where students research something and then produce something.
Is this just about Cornell Notes?
The template is the vehicle, not the point. What you’re watching is two teachers read a student’s in-progress thinking. If your school already uses a different scaffold, the diagnostic reads transfer to it — bring yours.
Is this about catching AI use?
No. There is no detection software here and no plagiarism policy. The premise is simpler: a finished product stopped being evidence of thinking, so you have to look at the middle instead of the end.
Can I share this with my department?
Please do — send them this page rather than the video file. They register in ten seconds and get the template and the PDFs too.
Is there a live version?
Yes. The live sessions are where you fill in the template as a learner and get feedback in the room, which is the part a recording can’t give you. Upcoming dates are on the workshops page.
Coming to a live one?
The live sessions are where you work on your own material and get feedback in the room.
See upcoming live workshops