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!!!!!!!!!!!!!