Another crack at it

Again we tried to enable student interest while following the school's model. This was achieved , in some degree, by allowing the student ideas to form and develop.

The students have definitely improved their questioning and are more able to manipulate information to reflect the needs of the questions.

Room 15 Scotland

Well, we've had a full on term. The students came up with all sorts of places and cultures, voted and chose Scotland! We talked about how culture is expressed and came up with Music, Legends & Folktales, Dress, Dance and Food & Drink. That created groups for inquiry (groups of 5-6). We've talked a lot more explicitly about the STRIVE model so that children become more familiar and comfortable with using it. To support that, I have done short mini inquiries, based on children's questions about the flags, haggis, bagpipes, Loch Ness monster etc - these have been quite popular. Students have been better in terms of questioning and we have also talked about the 7 levels of questioning - we need a common graphic/format for this to display in classrooms so that the language of questioning gets embedded in our culture of inquiry. I've got at least one student ready and keen to try an independent inquiry in Term 3 so that will be interesting and challenging, but exciting. In Term 3, it's our last term of the 1 year STRIVE trial model so I hope that it will be a term for thinking about how the model can be improved - evaluating it's strengths and weaknesses and talking about where to next as a school in terms of inquiry. I'm also excited of course to see where things go in terms of children's interests for Term 3.

Room 13

Knowledge of other cultures and countries is minimal, so it was good to have the class studying another country.

The children responded to doing team work to answer their inquiry questions, with the use of graphic organisers to refine and present information.  Focus on music and art for learning about Jamaica.  Further study developed of pirates who were based in Jamaica which roused interest.  Made use of a few Youtube clips as a resource for information to answer questions, as well as several Powerpoint presentations that were available and National Geographic for Kids website for animal and bird studies.   Web site for Jamaican patois language was good. Keen to share their knowledge with other classes in the Syndicate.  Difficult to obtain video resources about the Caribbean, but have just located one newly released BBC DVD called "Wild Caribbean" which is on order, and part of this will be viewed as a reinforcement of the unit objectives and the concepts  studied when it does arrive. 

Room 1 Japan inquiry

Much better this term, knowing more about the process.  More to do here and to make it more child based, although some of the items we chose are leading us to different places. e.g. investigating Mt Fuji means the children now want to find out about volcanos, how the earth was formed, etc.  This will lead nicely to topics for next term.  Didn't do many of the things I had thought about initially especially the music and dance.

At this level the process and the terminology seems to go over their heads but I guess the more we practice it the more the process will make sense!!!

Japan and Samoa Room 7

Room7 (Yr 1/2) of LNS have been diving into two countries. We will be presenting our findings on Japan over a wide range of subjects, from origami to a paint-shaded Mt Fuji at Sunset to kanji calligraphy to sumo to traditional Japanese housing. The essential go-to site that gave us everything we needed to know was http://web-japan.org/kidsweb/, and it's full of great interactive games for junior-level kids. Samoa is the smaller unit through which we've been paying more attention to the STRIVE model. Our suggestion for review, esp for the junior area, is STRIPE (incl. Present instead of Voice). Already the children have shown a high degree of spark, task and research, with artifacts ranging from native rubber balls to light weaponry (!) to kava bowls (!!) pouring in. We will be spoiled for things to present on our last week!

Room 12 Term2 Inquiry: China

Of course, we all had a lot of fun and learnt heaps about China. We focused on Chinese legends and special celebrations. We also became fascinated with pandas. A lot of useful websites were discovered, with some good video clips. We certainly got better at asking and answering questions! Did you know that red is a favourite colour? Could you explain the pattern on the Chinese flag? Do you know who Nian is - or PanGu - or the Jade Emperor? Could you write the word 'dragon' using chinese characters? Some of this information you will find in our Room 12 Blogspot (http://room12lns.blogspot.com) Next term's topic? Visit our site next term and find out.

Room 8 T2 Inquiry

  

*We have had emphasis on questioning and the children are enthusiastic.

*We have started on comparisons in 2 areas, food and schools, as these are areas the children know about from experience, which helps with their investigation into another country's way of doing these things.

*We have cooked NZ food and Indian food, and this was a real highlight. We have some more cooking to do.

*The children are using the library books, reading pictures and text for information after setting their own questions through class discussion. We hope to have something to share in the 'celebration'.

Room 18 Inquiry Term 2

Room 18 has been focussing in on Spain.  They really enjoyed the opportunity to learn some Spanish (colours, numbers, greetings) and this motivated them to find out more.  The different festivals were of high interest to them as they are different to our own.  They were also interested to learn about the flag and how widely spoken Spanish is.  Next step, if time, is some art based around Picasso's work.  

Talking about the STRIVE model was helpful, children quickly realised which stage we were up to and what that meant they needed to be doing.

Inquiry Term 2

room 12 has been doing an inquiry on China.  It has been generally a successful study , quite highly motivating for most of the children. They have had fun and produced some great pieces of work.

Points to note:

Graeme has done the majority of the unit as that is how we have timetabled the programme.

Children have increased their knowledge quite dramatically.

We have used a wide variety of resources including electronic.

Many of our students have difficulty using internet resources effectively because of their reading abilities

They have had opportunities to learn new skills with a focus on creating good questions and improving their oral language ( retelling)

The STRIVE model we are finding too complex and difficult for children at this stage of development to use in an efficient and meaningful way. We are questioning how appropriate the full model is for year 2 and 3 children.

Is there another simpler model that would better serve their needs?

The school wide focus works well as long as there is a wide enough range of ideas for classes to run with

Inquiry - reflections term2/09

This term has been interesting for the children in room 6. The term started with day 1 and a SPARK from the teachers, whereby all the teachers dressed up in a costume from another country. The TASK was thinking about appropriate questions that the children wanted to find out, attempting to use Trevor Bond's 7 stages of questioning. The children wanted to find out if people from different countries ate the same food. The RESEARCH and INFORMATION  was finding out about food from a number of countries. We used books from the school library and a number of different websites to find information and pictures. We also tried sushi, green tea, chicken korma, naan bread, french sticks, croissants, olives, chargrilled peppers, ciabatta, hummas and  salami in the classroom. Many of the children tried and experienced tastes that they had not tried before. A number of parents have asked for the recipes that we used. Many photos were taken and the children have been working on improving their photo taking techniques. At the moment we are finishing the Inquiry with VOICE and EVALUATION. The children are using comic-life and are trialing keynote with their findings, to share with others.

Far far away Room10

Awesome study really kid focused. Questions still need lots of work especially the Stages which follows Trevor Bonds model.Our STRIVE model was reinforced however like questioning still requires more work. The language of STRIVE should include Questioning as this is a major aspect of Inquiry and appears hidden in the word TASK. Managing Ourselves especially establishing a timeline for completion of the Research proved invaluable. Next learning step for term 3 will be that of notetaking.To achieve this integration in Writing and Reading is required. Room 10