Thursday, April 10, 2008

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