Term 3 Inquiry Sharing

Inquiry Review September 1 Staff shared what has worked well for their Term 3 inquiries and in some cases why things haven’t worked well. Also, we talked about the why as well as of the what. The key thing from these reflections is to feed forward evaluations and reflections into their class’s next inquiry. Some notes: • Lots of good questions, all children participating with improvement in quality questions • Noted that teachers valued children by recording their names with the questions • Children self and peer monitoring • Some answers from children didn’t meet teacher’s expectations in terms of depth/delivery • Evidence of student voice even at a junior level of the direction for the unit e.g. choice of animal to inquire about • Depending on the topic/questions, children needed lots of input and motivation from the teacher in terms of building their knowledge base • Having a good SPARK is key to a successful inquiry • Use of student developed wikis has been a good motivator/Voice tool and is also a good way to keep track of progress as the student’s wiki develops over time • Strong development of children’s understandings of keywords/phrases when creating questions has been noted by some teachers. • Good evidence of letting children’s wonderings generate the interest in their inquiry • Links made between keywords from questions to skilful use of a search engine like Google or Ask.com • Senior classes used to work alongside juniors and support with questions and rephrasing both the questions as well as putting findings into children’s own words • Need to find some websites that are written in child speak as a resource bank. Videos/DVDs can be useful sources of information as children are generally better at viewing and listening than they are at reading • Inquiry has been a good way to develop children’s social skills in a meaningful context and to improve participation/co-operation within a group as well as relating to others (Key Competencies). • Last term’s inquiry and/or recent class events has in some cases fed forward into a meaningful inquiry for Term 3, which has been good as it represents a response to children’s interests/needs • Teachers have noted that their class’s inquiries have been an enjoyable learning experience for them as well as their children and that children have taken the inquiry a way that the teacher hadn’t thought of or wanted but this has all turned out well • Many teachers have focused on questioning as the key aspect in this term’s inquiry • Good use of Trevor Bond’s questioning rubric in some classes • Use of quality literature in conjunction with DVD has been a strong motivating factor (Spiderwick Chronicles) in one class (SPARK backed up by high teacher enthusiasm) • A field trip can be used as a SPARK but can also be used as a fun way to bring a unit to an end (e.g. trip to Owlcatraz). • Kidspiration has been a useful means of organising and displaying ideas as a class • The emphasis on questioning, discussion etc in an inquiry has led to improved oral language and vocabulary skills • Use of art to show learning/knowledge rather than writing has been a positive in one class as it has given children an accessible and motivating means of Voice • Inquiries have been a good means of building up content knowledge in response to student interest (e.g. science – vertebrates, exoskeleton etc) • Music unit on ukuleles has become a secondary inquiry in one class by use of questionings and wonderings as well as developing children’s musical skills • Encouraging and developing questioning skills is a significant challenge for new entrants • We can’t assume what is in children’s heads, we need to think! Perhaps we need to try and think as a child thinks, also perhaps use make believe as an approach to develop curiosity and creativity or some hands on. • We need to feed information in (You Tube, fiction, non fiction, DVD, hands on experiences) to children when they are lacking in knowledge/interest. • http://www.pppst.com/index.html • There is a danger in losing coherence by going too broad or diverse with a topic – perhaps keep a central question and have groups work around it but contributing to the main question