Thursday, December 4, 2008

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