Feedback on Red on Blue

Staff focus = Questioning - maybe focus on the Task stage - assessment and staff development wise.

Feedback on Thoughts for Term 2 Ideas

Link with Key Competencies - Managing Self - having structure in place in terms of a timeline keeps students focused - we can discuss with children the importance of having a timeline to keep on track. Discussion around balance between time for finding and time for presenting information - a lot of time gets spent on finding rather than presenting information - obviously you need to find out information first. Integration of stages may occur -when we view a dance to find information, we are also learning how to present an idea at the same time. We need not think about the stages of STRIVE being entirely linear - not sure we agree on this one as yet! We need to have the model yes but we can and should be doing some Information at same time as Research etc - it's actually STRIVE with a stutter (STRTRITRIVRITRTRIVE) and lots of TRI!!!

From the Principal's Pen!

We have done it -we have all successfully blogged on some aspect of our Inquiry undertaken this term! We have also successfully used chatzy - aren't we simply the best!!! Yes  the bribes helped us get through the process.....and yes I  have yet to master anti clockwise!!!!! Ponder...how could you use blogging in your room? what about chatzy...could they be two tools we use with our Inquiry model?

In dealing with looking toward term 2  - we have come up with some excellent suggestions in how we can continue to strengthen the STRIVE model here at Levin North! 

Term Two Inquiry ideas

Cultural idea popular - how cultures use dance and the arts to express themselves - 

Cultures in relation to our own.

Whole school spark. e.g visiting cultural group(s)

Individuals or classes?

Questioning - focus?  TO day on questioning coming up next Friday.

Questioning gives direction and focus to study and achievement.

Identify different cultures identified in our school community - shoulder tapping.

Sharing websites and doing interactive resources.  Sharing parents if good.  

Research and finding out.

Need to know spark well before getting into unit so we have schoolwide spark rather than individual.

Using Voice - how can this happen successfully?  Dance, song, game coming from arts emphasis in culture.  eg. batik, tie-dying, leads to focus on country.

Not same voice throughout school, choose per room, but whole class can investigate same topic and have same activities.

Should we have a whole school question with rooms doing country choice?? or is it better to let classes set questions?? Great value in questions set in classes by children after spark.

Find culture relative to school for ready resource?

If we don't have a set question, does it make it too open/wide for children to maintain focus and achieve outcome.  Could we use children's questions to choose one, two or three as focus, not everyone's questions.  Gives control to chn and T for direction.

More time needed for teaching the skills to question well, to try questions. All student questions acceptable, use to choose most useful questions teaching children how to question.

red on blue

Red on blue

* school spark to inspire whole school learning. * are we going too far too fast? * we need to do lots of discussion in our classes about the STRIVE so students can see the process of the inquiry. * remember the aim of independent inquiry learning and passing onto the language and skills of inquiry. * perhaps staff focus on one stage of the model, e.g. questioning techniques. * more definition of boundaries of inquiry for next term e.g. dance or art or language. * bring/involve family cultural groups, including European * units need more time to gather info etc, probably 6 full weeks, 1 week to do Spark and teaching of STRIVE model, including the language of inquiry.

Term 2 ideas

 Term 2.

We need to set the kids timelines and deadlines for reaching the end of certain stages.

We need to show the chn HOW to approach each stage so that they have a format and a platform to work from. We need to work on what the STRIVE model is with our kids. eg: What is going to make good research? How do I know I'm doing well?

  In term 2 let's teach the STRIVE model and use our topic as an example of how it can work. We can prevaluate each stage by asking "How can we (our class) be successful at this stage?" We can relate our topic back to the model at each stage. 

  We could study a cultural topic according to our year-group abilities, and anchor the topic to, say, one culture per class in order to make it easier to study the STRIVE model itself.

  One problem with this is that if we set limits and timelines, we could be working against the individualism and freedom of the inquiry model. We could put less emphasis on stages like Research and more on the later stages such as Voice; work to present, more than find.

THOUGHTS for Term 2

In small groups we discussed about a school wide spark and the importance of this as a motivator as well as a spark happening in your own classroom, depending on the concept that classes are going to run with.  What has worked well in some teams has been the sharing of websites and this has motivated the children to run with the concept.

We have found that we need to revisit our strive model in our own classroom as well as working to a timeline. This term has produced a "fast" inquiry and maybe the depth has not been there. It appears that this inquiry was too wide and not pulled in enough to be classes AND school-wide. Especially after the xmas holiday break whereby a lot of the students have forgotten the stages and the parts that they play.

Thinking ahead to term 4 when we have a flower show, can we have some flower power thinking?

Thoughts for term 2, possibly having the pacifica group from the local college and a class lunch sharing, looking at different cultures and costumes that they wear. This would be homely for our children that are multicultural.

A school wide spark GETS everybody talking and hopefully the buy-in from all!! 

We still need to have that student voice factor. We are looking forward to listening to Trevor Bond and he will be able to help US in the area of questioning. As teachers we need to give direction to our students in locating resources, so they are more focused. The resources need to be relevant to the concept being shared. Classes sharing their inquiry during the journey to other classes and also the celebration.

Topic Term 1 GJB

Topic: How a Mousetrap Works

Spark "There are mice around our storeroom ......" discussion, what now?

After discussion: Task - draw a mousetrap (any style acceptable, no pics etc to work from) - compare and discuss drawings.

Lead on to observe big pic of mousetrap - "How many parts?" "What purpose of each?"

Voice

Our major question is Are Guns Necessary?

We looked at ammunition and then children picked a weapon and formed focussing questions on how they worked.  Research was needed and problems with accessing inappropriate sights arose.  We presented work on key note.  All how stuff works but our major question wasn't.  

We need to discuss using thinking hats and using information to draw unit together and get back to main question.

Term One identified needs

Children's enthusiasm for topic great - they chose it from some reading we did.

Brainstorming becoming effective - new emphasis: moving thoughts onto graphic organisers apart from mind maps.

Information to be at reader friendly level - T found sites suitable, this to be developed.

Conscious of need to convert information to knowledge related to previous sentence - reading ability, use of oral work to continue to support this.

Bit of both by Neil

My kids got into research, albeit from a small range of sources. They were keen to look and are beginning to think as they go about the relevance of the information they find and relating it back to their questions in the Task stage. More work is needed on sifting and sorting and critical thinking - I think some explicit teaching and modelling of this with many repetitions - of course the ability to read and view and listen is a prerequisite to good Information stage work. Term 2 - well I'm really excited about the cultural idea - how cultures use dance, music, dress to express themselves.

Task

The children from room6 were able to think of lots of questions, but a lot of work had to be done around what sorts of questions were being asked. We wanted fat questions that would lead to more thought and depth. The first lot of questions that we tried were all over the place  but by round 2 the children were all on board and becoming more engaged as one question led into another and the children fed off one another. Continue to work on this.

Inquiry

Inquiry

The SPARK is so fundamentally important, unless this works well the kids are not going to be motivated. Time needs to be spent thinking of attention grabbing activities that will gain and sustain the kids whole focus.

voice

We have been able to research and gather information orally and in written form , some students more efficiently than others but I have struggled a bit with finding an authentic voice for the class as a whole. 

A few students have become easily engaged and contrbuted well

term 1 inquiry reflections

What went well? Spark seemed to be good. Students love animals and own animal photos from Africa on projector seemed inspiring. Simpe questionning techniques, going well, children getting used to asking questions and to remember the anwers. (Most of them) Could do better? More questionning skills!!!! (hopefully on TOD) More relevant research and information resources.

How things work: Brainstormed possible topics - shortlisted the things we could study - settled on robots and remote controlled toys - sparked by me bringing my remote cars and spider, and my roboquad - kids asked questions, mainly about movement of robots and how to make remote toys work.

Had great research session today - class split in three - made pull-motor cars, created circuits and programmed a robot.

Term one - Information

We have done our research and are now sorting through our information and deciding what is relevant.  We have discussed key words and the children realise that having specific questions to answer makes their search smaller and more manageable.  The class are in pairs to work through the topic "How Stuff Works".  It's interesting to see the topics they have decided on.

Research

I believe that there needs to be a bullet point Under research which includes a timeline . Kids need to have expectations on what is expected from each stage. I need to build accountability for those kids who take too long on one aspect of the STRIVE model. More time needed building the vocab of the strive model was also needed.

term 1 inquiry - research - Rm 3

Having spent the first few weeks listening to the children's questions, we were able to develop the 'how stuff works' from interest things that interest them. We looked at how the swimming pool works and asked questions like - 

Why doesn't the water get dirty?

How does Mr Cook keep it clean?

What is in the shed?

In our research we have looked at things the children have brought from home. This has meant looking on the net for more information and using equipment to explore. We have found out how a pen works and how pens from a long time ago worked. Some questions we have asked -  

Why does an old pen look like that? 

How does a pen work when we dip the end in ink? 

How can you write with a feather?

When would you write with a feather?

Blogging our Unit

Today we are all spending some time in our staff meeting blogging our unit. Reflecting on the Stages covered to date...and digging deeper on one of these to reflect on what has gone well for me, what will I do differently next term and perhaps thinking about the support that I need -is it a team level? mentoring groups? or perhaps at the whole staff level?

Wiki Workshop

Like all workshops I learnt a load of ideas that I can use as a teacher. I implemented these with my class at 8:30. Kids are motivated and engaged in technology and are steadily adapting skills to suit their learning needs. In my class I have started wikis for all my students at a variety of levels and we are experimenting how wikis can be used as Electronic Portfolio's . They are used as a tool for reflecting on what we have learned and will be a key component of our Inquiry presentations. iClass Teacher

GOALS

It was great to have Jan with us this morning for some professional development. We are aware that we need to have our milestone to Jan by the 22 May. One thing that we need to do as Lead Teachers is to encourage the sharing of the challenges and successes of their classroom inquiries and the process that they themselves are going through, by means of blogging.  The Ministry are expecting schools to be using as much as possible web 2 tools. This means using wikis, blogs, websites and PODCASTING. From this, the students are getting an authentic audience and contributing to global audiences.

Our 2 big things for this year are assessment and having a "toolbox". 

We are setting up for our Celebration Day, whereby the whole school will be sharing their class inquiry to some of their peers. This will be happening in the last week of school.

Jen