Cluster Inquiry Model Celebration Day

Six schools presented their inquiry journey and while the models were different, there were definite commonalities St Mary’s – D Day, link with gospel values and community aspirations St Joseph’s – Opoutere model Foxton Primary – other STRIVE! Opiki – strands on the bridge – reducing number of these through reflection Poroutawhao – inquiry intersection Oroua Downs – organise, discover, share Common Themes • Passion and enthusiasm for the benefits and advantages of inquiry • Reflection – schools have been brave, dived in, got started and been to reflect on what worked well and what didn’t and then forging onwards and upwards. Some models have already changed somewhat, even in a short time span • Importance of relevance and ownership for students • Diversity and creativity of most models from within the cluster • Importance of school-wide practice/language/display • Need to develop higher order thinkers and questioners • Information processing skills – being able to do this seamlessly with information gathering • Importance of social action and making a difference for student engagement – the so what of inquiry • Importance of collegiality/support/sharing/planned dialogue for building teacher capacity in inquiry based learning • Recording/planning of inquiry - modelling books. Perhaps we need to look at range of planning approaches from cluster schools – got to be prepared for changing direction - can’t plan a whole unit 7 weeks in advance! • Idea of a blog or wiki to document inquiry process as a class/teacher/group/individual student • Kids have really stepped up, taken leadership and got fully engaged, taken on roles willingly • Evidence of kids working powerfully together, group work with a purpose and students of different ages working together • Expecting ICT component of inquiry sharing • What about depth and coverage? Needs to be considered • Assessment – skills, rubrics, student ownership • The power of clustering, learning from other schools • The power of just in time learning for teachers and principals • Inquiry has a great tie in with the introduction of the NZ Curriculum 2007 and the empowerment of schools to design a curriculum that meets the needs of their community • Some schools have used SOLO taxonomy and made use of Bloom’s, Michael Pohl, Tony Ryan, Art Costa work -perhaps need to do some more work and thinking around this

Inquiry Celebration

Wow, we've reached the end of our first shared inquiry - What Would Make a Great a NZ Holiday? Today, the school is broken into three groups to share their learning with 3-4 other classes from across the levels of the school. Room 17 ( Year 1) had a great time camping at Papamoa (it's a place quite close to Miss Hepburn's office!) - they "slept" in a tent and played on the beach and went swimming! Room 13 (Year 3-4) shared lots of information about their journey through the STRIVE model and what they were doing at each stage. They learned a lot about various NZ places and the great activities you can do there. Mr Shekleton is playing his role as entertainer in between items! Room 14 (Year 5-6) have shared their findings in a Keynote presentation. They talked about their questions and the discussions they had as a class to choose the direction their inquiry took. They have created brochures to advertise the places they would choose to visit in Christchurch and also present the itinerary. Room 11 (Year 3-4) also shared what they did at each stage of the model. They have focused particularly on sharing their brochures and posters which are part of the Voice stage of the model. They used Pages as the software to create the brochures and established some shared success criteria to evaluate their work by. Room 1 (Year 1) have chosen to focus on our local area of the Horowhenua. They shared their discussions through the STRIVE model e.g. what is a holiday? Mr Baker has interviewed children about their various opinions and answers on the inquiry questions - e.g. what would you take on your outing or where in Horowhenua would you go? They have also shared their art work arising from the places they would visit. It's great to see the way that all classes have done things differently, going far and wide (and not so far) on their "holidays" but everyone has engaged children in using the new STRIVE Levin North inquiry learning model.

Charting our progress

It is exciting to be sitting with a group who are sharing their journey of where they are at. One room is ready to start their journey, another group is tent camping...how exciting!

Great hear a new entrant room using utube to support their investigation. The idea of turning their room into a TENT.....WOW!

Another group is going to have their children visiting different places  around the Horowhenua.

Another group has spent a lot of time looking at what makes good brochure.

Making up an itinerary has been a key focus for another group.

I am looking forward to seeing all this work coming to fruition.

We then got onto  ideas for Voice - these included - postcards, posters, bochures, itinerary, oral presentation, drama , role play,  podcasts, radio commercial, big huge labs, flickr, dumpr (online graphics), real life presentation, iweb,  parent involvement etc

Tracking Our Unit

As I wander around the rooms I see lots of evidence of Inquiry in Action....I wanted to make sure that this is a focus in our foyer ( a very small space)....so yes I have finally done this. We need to make sure that evidence of our model can be seen throughout the school....as I often say  - so that we are all on the same page. 

The Curriculum Day we had with Mary chamberlain and Lester Flockton gave us much to reflect on...particularly in terms of authentic learning.

The other thing that touched was the need to be finding ways to involve parents in what we are doing. This can be said also of Inquiry. As Principal I need to make sure that I continue to find ways to share our Inquiry journey with our parents. I think our sharing that we have planned is going to be very important....we need to get this right...we need to take the time; give ourselves the time to truly celebrate and reflect on this wee journey that we have undertaken this term. Yes this is something that I need to provide the leadership in....as I have said before ....watch this space!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Spark and Task

On the first day back we had our Spark  -which consisted of a 25 minute assembly. We the staff had fun in the process. The play "Are We there Yet?" had the children responding...after all how often do you see the staff acting out a scene that they could identify with ?!!!!!!!!!!

All the staff dressed up as if they were going on a summer holiday and yes sang "We're all going on a Summer holiday" Darryl put together a clever slide show that had the children wondering....

One day on we are having our staff meeting on Spark and Task. Such a wide range of strategies have been employed by the staff. Sharing is an integral part to ensuring that we all get the most out of the process.

We did a PMI to reflect on the Spark - this will really help us when it comes time to planning our next unit. One thing that bothered me was that we left the support staff out. Letters were sent to our key relievers last term inviting them to the Spark launch. It was fortunate that we realised our mistake and we were able to invite them to be part of this. I believe if our Strive model is to be successful then we need to work hard to bring everyone on board.

We did an activity to develop questioning skills . Staff were introduced to fat and skinny questions.

We recognise the need to upskill our questioning skills and in turn our teaching strategies to enhance questioning skills.

Watch this space!!!!!!!!!

uLearn 2008

Some of the workshops have provided some great websites that may help you with your Inquiry:

• circave.com and dipity.com for timelines
• bubblecomment.com...this is an interesting one where you can actualy put a bubble (your face and you speaking!!!) on the student's working...quite an effective way of comunicating with your students
• You may like to check some of these otheres out glogster.com    wix.com     voicethread.com     weebly.com    slide.com    bliptv    teachertube.com     clustrmap    boomp3.com   daftdoggy.com    vocaroo.com - yes theree is a heap there but some great tools there

I have also gone on to some other great websites - 

Bucklands Beach has done some great work on eportfolios

eisforlearning.wikispaces.com  

fendalton openair school

Tony ryan website - has all his thinking keys there....lots of free downloads

Yes so much....you may like to browse!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So much to take in

ulearn08

Will Richardson and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach - spoke about Building a community of practice - the best ones  are the ones that are co=owned  -it is about sharing....we need to move away from imposed norms...co-creative... isn't that we are aspiring for? We have started with a model and what we want now is for people to be taking ownership. There are four distinct stages

1. Sharing ...

2 .cooperate

3. collaborate

4. act collectively for change

I can see strong parallels to what we are trying to achieve at North. At each stage we need to build heaps of opportunities for sharing.

Our timeline allows for this. We have linked the timeline to our staff meeting overview ... I believe this is where I can show strong leadership and perhaps keep us all sane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Inquiry Learning Launch

We've spent time with our staff at another staff meeting sharing an "Inquiry Learning Support Booklet", perhaps a first draft of our bible of inquiry learning! It sets out what is to happen at each stage of the S.T.R.I.V.E. model. This document was well received and should give teachers plenty of ideas, which of course will be built on with their own experiences and inspirations. Next we brainstormed how to launch our Term 4 Inquiry - Are We There Yet? The challenge to staff for our launch event is to have fun and participate with enthusiasm in the initial SPARK assembly! I suspect this challenge will be easy for some and more.... well, challenging for others! I'm not allowed to give away too much though. We've also shared our staff meeting presentation with the Board of Trustees on Monday night and it went down a treat - the board members were genuinely excited by the opportunities presented by the introduction of an inquiry learning approach.

Michael Pohl

Michael challenged us to think about what we are doing and to in a sense be able to justify what we are doing! So why teach thinking.....yes that was an excellent springboard as we discussed what we do at North and more importantly need to be doing at North. 

Neil touches on this in his reflections. For me it is about getting us all paddling the same waka  -so we need to be "talking the same talk!". We have chosen the Hats as a major thinking tool for our school...but then he challenged us re our level of expertise and very quickly it became apparent that our expertise is some what lacking...so this will need to be a strong focus for us as we implement "Strive!

Michael Pohl seminar (Neil's take)

Michael Pohl Seminar - Coley Street 11/9/08

This session was hugely useful and timely as we ponder the new LNS curriculum vision and inquiry learning model - thinking is a core component of both these things. Today was thought provoking and challenging for me as a class teacher - what am I doing to foster a culture of thinking in my class? Some things but I'm nowhere near as committed to it as I should be. As well as the thoughts below I got a lot from the modelling of use of various tools, some new to me and some I haven't used much or for a while. Why is important to develop a culture of thinking in the classroom and school? Why teach thinking?

• John Hattie - “teaching thinking strategies” and “giving good feedback” had high positive effects on student achievement.
• The amount of information in the world is growing exponentially, therefore we need to think more and think critically.
• Thinking is one of our key competencies! This is one good reason for developing a culture of thinking.

Principle of Abandonment In order to move forward, we need to be able to leave something behind (rather than adding something to the backpack). - How would we at North cope with cutting something we’re good at/have done for ages/are comfortable with in order to try something new? Some thoughts/key ideas

• Important that teachers AND students become good questioners.
• Balance of divergent and convergent thinking activities is good - (wide - deep thinking)
• To think is to question (Dewey)
• It is important to be able to communicate one’s thinking (not just be able to think).
• Establish a language of thinking - get them young! Pervade the class with this language, visual prompts, etc
• Plan and Programme with a Thinking focus
• Share ideas/models etc - pass them on to students.
• Make the teaching of thinking manageable.
• We want to see good thinking transferred from the class to the playground and out of school time and as a lifelong habit.
• If we are going to do deBono’s Hats or any thinking tools, they need to be thoroughly understood (all hats) not just superficially.
• We need to help teachers see the long term, global, sizeable benefit of having a thinking curriculum and seeing that it is manageable and achievable.
• We should use SCUMPS in our trial unit in Term 4. SCAMPER/SCUMPS acronyms can be adapted to different contexts e.g. music, character analysis. Acronyms help make these tools more easy to remember and use.
• Questions and Questioning are the most powerful technologies of all (Jamie McKenzie)
• We as teachers should reflect on our use of closed and open questions and whether they are requiring divergent or convergent thinking.
• What matters more than the answers is the questions...
• We must involve students in the previous teacher’s domain of planning and questioning to encourage student engagement and student ownership of their learning.

Inquiry and Thinking We still need to start with a guided inquiry approach (e.g. with a contentious issue) Students can create question chains to get to higher order or deeper thinking - what if and how questions. It is really important to get questioning right in an inquiry model - take time over it, vary the questions, probe to get good questions. Also, make the questions those that will lead to new learning. It is good to get students devising their own questions as it leads to increased ownership. It is also important to build the skills that will be used in successive inquiries.

Inquiry Learning 1st Staff Meeting

We had our first Inquiry Staff meeting in Week 5 of Term 3. Staff had been directed to readings on Inquiry Learning online at www.inquiringmind.co.nz. Several activities and discussions took place: 1. What is Inquiry Learning? i.e. What are the key features? What does IBL look like in the classroom? What do we know about it? 2. What are some of the features of a traditional teaching model in a classroom? 3. What are some of the features of an inquiry learning model? In an inquiry learning classroom, what is the role of the teacher? And what is the role of the learner? JPGs recording our thinking are embedded in this post for you to view. We were pleased with our team of dedicated teachers and what they came up with - they showed a good basic understanding of inquiry, essential for our launch in Term 4.

Launching S.T.R.I.V.E.

We launched our trial school inquiry model today - S.T.R.I.V.E. (Spark, Task, Research, Information, Voice, Evaluation). Over 2007 and 2008 we have looked at a range of inquiry models and seen some in action in schools. We wanted to create a model for us that would be easy for everyone to understand, especially the students and easy to remember (hence the acronym). Although we have a culture of kotahitanga and consultation at North, we felt the urgency of getting something up and running that people can get their teeth into soon, so we decided to draft a model for trial over the coming year, rather than have a full on process of school wide development. All of the staff will have a voice as we travel the journey together - planning together, discussing progress and of course having fun and showing enthusiasm together as we launch our first shared and directed inquiry - Are We There Yet? with the essential question "What Would Make a Great N.Z. holiday?

Our Model -the launch

Tuesday 2nd September  -we launched our Inquiry model! 

STRIVE  -Spark, Task, Research, Information, Voice, Evaluation

Yummy fairy cakes to get us into the zone and a polished presentation from the ICT team.

Some interesting discussion around the pictorial to support the model. I am pleased that the ICT lead teachers are going to organise posters etc for every room. I think this is important. As one staff member said we need to get it out there to our wider community.

We filmed our launch so that staff who were away today able to be "virtually" here!

We are being pretty formal to start with ...our first one will be 6-7.  I believe that how we launch this first Inquiry will be very important - we need to show that this is going to be fun and that we are all in this together! By injecting real enthusiasm and energy in to the launch we will get off to the perfect start!

The six thinking hats are going to be used schoolwide. We have resources within our school. We are also going to be  using the website to access resources to support us in this work.  This is  our first stage of integrating thinking skills into our Inquiry. Other models will be used as teachers see fit.

Watch this space!

Our Model -the launch

How are you going?

Back in February somebody wrote about changing the way things are done - am keen to hear how that person has got - have they been radical as suggested -how did it go? 

Inquiry - Keeping a Learning log? Tracking the Inquiry

This is an area that needs lots of thinking...how do  you keep track of what is achieved? I have seen schools particularly in the Junior/middle school collate all the work into an Inquiry Book...these have been kept and just browsing through them you can quickly see how the children have "grow" within the Inquiry process... a quite effective way of keeping a record.

muritai

Th thing that struck me was the way in which they have embedded a school-wide Inquiry model. The students were confidently able to articulate what they were doing. A lot of time was spent gaining this consistency -this will be the challenge for us.

To be the best we can  -came across load and clear in how they implemented their model

Muritai

The thing that struck me about this school is their strong belief /desire to strive for excellence;so whatever they do they aim to be the best they can and I believe that it came through.

Posing the question "what does success look like for us" . They had really unpacked this  -so you saw consistency throughout the school. That is going to be a challenge that we need to meet . We have to as a team agree - what will success look like at North - and so in terms of our Inquiry model  -what does this mean? 

Hey I wrote this ages ago  - have just figured how to get it back and post it!!!!!Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Muritai School/Inquiry

The journey of an Inquiry needs to be documented.

A number of children from Muritai School presented to an audience of teachers from the Horowhenua ICT cluster. The skills gained for these children were: interviewing and talking to people; creating questions, gathering information and researching and sifting information; more confident in approaching people; better able to research.

Teachers play a HUGE part in Inquiry, it is the teacher that needs to START the Inquiry-PROMPT and SET the QUESTIONS and IGNITE the SPART in the kids. Being able to set the scene, so to speak, will greatly help the children to engage and remain focused on the task in hand. The children need to be IMMERSED in the process and while we may be at the beginning of this journey for our school, most of it will possibly need to be teacher directed, using the 6 thinking hats or whatever thinking tool a teacher is comfortable with. At whatever level your class is at, the more that Inquiry is promoted the easier it will become for teachers and students.

In setting up our model, we keep some things at the top of our mind:

-length of inquiry?

-curriculum coverage?

-assessment? (what is the long term picture we want/require?)

I would highly recommend anyone looking at pursuing Inquiry to take a look at what Muritai School has to offer. Also check out their website.

Muritai School

"To be the best you can be" is what Muritai School believe for their students.

As a school, they self review and their achievements reflect high standards. The children demonstrate a love of learning, children are engaged, they build self-belief, they encourage children to take risks, the children are resilient-they are able to learn and move on from and through challenges.

Since 2001 Inquiry Learning has mostly been done at syndicate levels. They ask the question, does action research make a difference to the learning of the children?

The school has devised their own model called The Howie Learn model (The how we learn).

The head stands for VALUES, the heart stands for THINKING and the tools stand for SKILLS.

I really liked what I saw happening, you saw "Howie Learn" in every classroom and so it has become what they stand for and believe in, from the juniors through to the seniors.

They believe, the driver is the big idea, with integration and ecology, as ecology is a big part of their school. They are wanting to micro analysis Inquiry to study the impact at child level.

The school used to do 8 Inquiry a year, a few years ago, but what they shared was, keep it simple and be realistic! Time is always an issue, but I understand the need for keeping a model simple, user friendly, with step by step instructions, so that it becomes easy for all to use and so that its hopefully easier to get all on board. All need to be heading in the same direction, allowing for a variety of pace, until the confidence grows and then the realization hits, that they are not on the bottom rung of the ladder, but already 2-3 steps up.

Our Lady of Loudes

What a great day we had @ Our lady of Loudes in Palmerston North on the 19 June, 08. They shared their journey with the cluster about pre 2000, where the school was involved with info-link - Action Learning papers that were undertaken by the whole staff at the time. This gave them a solid foundation with which to build on later. The shift continued to happen with ICT related strategic tours, so that the school was aware of cutting edge technology. This encouraged a conscious effort by all staff to learn and acquire knowledge in the areas of kidpix, inspiration/hyper studio so that now in 2008, ICT is still a huge tool for student learning. Their approach to Inquiry Based Learning is a Hook in - tuning in - finding out - sorting out - designing and making - making connections/making and connecting - in the future. Digital photos are the key element with students taking the majority of photo's, as children often view things in a different way and can capture the moment very successfully. Part of the success criteria for this school is that ALL classes participate and Inquiry is timetables into the school day. Their ICT strategic plan 2008-2010 includes Inquiry and Loudes Learners use their paving stones as a header, just like stepping stones for a student's lifelong journey. Wonderful school, I would highly recommend it for those that are looking to implement Inquiry Based Learning into their school.

Inquiry - reflections.

Why look at Inquiry Based Learning? For Coley Street School and their journey, they had found that the children were switched off to learning and therefore change WAS necessary. 

For Levin North, we want to enhance learning and teaching through ICT, Inquiry and Student Engagement.HOW? - good question. This is a huge area that we are working on to ensure that our journey (students and teachers) is achievable and successful for all concerned and that we will grow together, with a shared vision. As a staff - this is our journey, we all need to take ownership and contribute, so that we can learn together, critically reflect, have support for and with one another, taking our time, using our professional development wisely, becoming aware of the tools available, ensuring student Engagement, as well as allowing for innovation. Watch this space.

My children are highly enthusiastic about asking  their own questions and finding the answers. The next step for me is to find more resources for the children to use that are appropriate to their skill level. I will be asking my ICT lead teacher/Mentor or hep with finding  websites and using Comic Life to display data.

Inquiry learning journey

We believe that it fits well with the new curriculum and is the best way for children to gain skills to become lifelong learners. It also ensures that children have involvement and ownership of their learning, thus enhancing student engagement. This year, we are exploring a variety of approaches to inquiry with a view to forming a model suitable for our school by the end of the year. The staff will be given some readings to ignite their understanding. Our term by term integrated units (schoolwide) are being adapted and tailored to encourage more of a student-driven, inquiry based model for learning, rather than teachers choosing a topic as was done in the past. For example, in term 2, our unit is What If... leaving the opportunity for syndicates, classes or groups to select what they are learning about and their main and subsidiary questions. We are currently working out how best to implement a schoolwide inquiry model, especially whether we go through a full process of the whole staff developing the model or our inquiry team devising a model which will be trialled for a year. We are learning from visiting other schools, taking inquiry workshops at conferences and investigating various models. Whichever way we choose, we would like to take on an inquiry model from the beginning of next year. So far, the main implication for staff has been the change of approach in our units and this change is being supported through syndicates working together and discussing how teachers are handling this new approach in their classrooms.

There is an  interesting article in the 5 May Gazette that talks about what a group of Otago schools are doing in terms of "enhanced teaching of inquiry learning". (Page 11 of the Gazette)

"everybody's rising to the lift of each other's work and student achievement rises as a consequence". It's that concept of everyone working together in a collaborative environment -something that we are working towards here.

As we progress along our Inquiry journey it is exciting to see teachers moving outside their comfort zone and giving more power to the learner! You can feel the buzz as teachers progress in this direction.

Term two Unit and Our Inquiry Journey

I think it is exciting the way we have left the door open in terms of charting your own Inquiry. Using the team structure to develop this work means that you can pick up some good ideas along the way

What a great introduction to Inquiry Based Leaning. What we heard from Jan-Marie Kellow leaves us with much to think about with regards to the road ahead and it just won't happen overnight, but it will happen. Food for thought- Inquiry Based Learning and Information Literacy are two different things. Inquiry Based Learning is much more than just what we know, what we want to find out and once that has occurred, what we now know.

Higher Order Thinking and Inquiry

Presentation online at: http://centre4.interact.ac.nz/modules/kb/entry.php?space_key=15095&module_key=56537&entry_key=2545&category_key=682

The idea of a wonder wall is a good one. Have a heading - I wonder ?

Two parts within the display - I wonder related to the current study and the second one for general wondering.  This  idea cam up during Jan-Marie's workshop.

Stages of Inquiry

Ask

Acquire

Analyse

Apply

Act

Assess

Jan-Maries session

The thing that we need is to decide the model - give the children the tools to solve their answers

 - that is what we will be doing with our model - keep the link with the new curriculum.

Inquiry is about responding to the learners of today

Inquiry-based Learning workshop

Workshop with Jan-Marie Kellow e-fellow learning about Inquiry. We're really looking forward to getting our teeth into developing inquiry at North. IBL is based on questioning and wondering, children's interests and curiosity, investigation. It may focus on problems and issues and encompasses motivation, skills, processes. She suggested that key elements of IBL are

1. Student ownership (to some extent) - teacher still has a role though in developing the inquiry
2. Authentic contexts with purpose and relevance to their lives - they must be able to grasp and relate to the problem or issue. Idea - Wonder walls - allow children to post notes on a wall both for general and current inquiry topic based learning.
3. Some scaffolding needed - guided inquiry - means that children of any age can be engaged in IBL - there are different forms of inquiry - directed, guided, pure
4. The teacher has a facilitator role - may be doing some teaching - they are not Captain Answer!
5. There may still be a need for explicit teaching of concepts and skills relevant to the inquiry
6. IBL will often include knowledge creation - some new presentation or arrangement of information - related to the purpose of the inquiry
7. Action - this is controversial - some people argue that social action is compulsory, others do not. I think it does depend on the purpose.

Jan-Marie's model - Ask, Acquire, Analyse, Apply, Act, Assess - 6 A's. Many models have different expressions of the same handful of steps or concepts In the assessment stage - look at developing rubrics with your class for assessment of IBL IBL and Info Literacy are related in that you need Info Literacy skills to do good inquiry but they are not the same and shouldn't be confused. IBL is also a good means of meaningfully practising Info Literacy skills. These skills may need teaching in the context of inquiry. Models of inquiry may be class, syndicate or school wide. Expressing them visually and graphically is helpful to enabling students' understanding of their inquiry. When we find information an inquiry, we should triangulate it from two other sources Developing an Inquiry Learning Model in a School Link to follow It's important to have this to develop common understandings of inquiry - visiting other schools is a good idea. Also, look at the elements of Inquiry and discuss what they mean to staff. This discussion will be probably be quite diverse and may even be quite heated. We need to explore, question and trial existing models. We could use an "inquiry into inquiry" for teachers. Don't be afraid to get underway though..... Personalise the model for your school and express it visually. Communicate with your community. A change to planning documents may be needed to take into account inquiry based learning - important when doing integrated unit plan sheet for us. BUILD THE PLANE WHILE IT'S IN THE AIR! As teachers we need to developing a questioning attitude and the ability to question in our children. Why inquiry?

• Fun, meaningful, providing life long skills, purpose, sits well with the new curriculum, it's rich and motivating, engaging for children

Introducing Inquiry

We've spent some of today with Jan Thomas, our ICT facilitator from Coley Street School (and it was her birthday!). She showed us a model of how to implement inquiry learning in a school, including key considerations like whether to have whole school topics, thinking tools to use, what form of inquiry to use at different levels, whether to have a whole school model. The first step we need to take as a group is to learn more about inquiry ourselves by way of professional reading from the cluster blog and attending the upcoming cluster PD with Jan Marie Kellow the e-fellow (that rhymes!). Currently we have whole school broad topics that teachers are encouraged to pursue with their classes using some sort of inquiry/child centred approach. We look forward to the challenges ahead of tying inquiry in with our curriculum development programme.

Here we go

Well the year is under way and it is a very busy time. The recent learning@schools conference has reinforced a lot of what we are doing @ school. I have some more ideas and am thinking about making a radical transformation in the way I run my class programme. Not quite sure how yet but I want to take a risk and try new ideas. D