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.
