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

Inquiry - Sharing

We have just had a fantastic sharing session re our current Inquiry. The key focus has been:

• Share something that worked well
• Why do you think this was the case?
• Application for future Inquiries

A strong theme coming through was the teachers reflecting on student voice in the Inquiry -the stronger the student voice often the greater the success with the Inquiry.

Teachers were able to identify the where to next time....Inquiry is alive and well at Levin North!

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

Questioning With Trevor Bond

The day with Trevor was focused on questioning

Questions are the engine house of thinking - Edward De Bono

Learning is knowing what to do when we don't know what to do  - Guy Claxton

The new curriculum enables us to develop the notion of questioning within the classroom context

Vocab walk - how many words can you see...should be big enough so that you can read them from your desk...should be 300 of them......wow what a challenge...print saturated classroom!!!! Perhaps a good challenge for the syndicates to do...work as buddies to see how many words you have in the classroom. We got some good ideas on how we could perhaps do this. Words on boxes, ranches, nets, having cards at the ready  - when it comes up, record it and stick it up on the wall

He talked about dumbing down our language...we need to use the language of thinking...brain research  -children think in high order methods than we think that they do. We need to give students the opportunity to think in higher levels...predictive thinkers, aware thinkers, strategic thinkers. reflective thinkers.

episodic

Five types of knowledge....knowledge is formed in the  space between the ears.

1. Factual
2. Conceptual
3. Behavioural
4. Linguistic
5. Episodic

Understanding forms at the intersection of these five types of knowledge. To have good understanding you have to have all of these types of knowledge come together.

We should never underestimate the power of modelling on our learning and on our learners.

Celebration of the understanding.

We are doing inquiry so that we can lead our students to being independent learners...have to build high quality tasks for our students...that is our challenge!  Once we  get to this point then we can move them to negotiated tasks......but we need to remember that they need something to model their inquiry on.

Good inquiry moves children to independence...along side this we need to develop our literacy...at the centre of all this is that in order to develop knowledge with questioning.

You cannot engage with text without comprehension  with requires us to be questioning. 

Postman  "The most important and intellectual ability man has yet to develop - the art and science of questioning"

Divergent are the most powerful kind of questions.

Teachers  ask 99.89% of the questions in the classroom . Quilt study.(an English study)

The Wonder sheet suggestion...same kind of idea as the wonder wall...

Questions comes from the spark of curiosity

The art of good teaching begins when we can answer the questions our students are really trying to ask us, if only they knew how to do so.....debatable

Learner questions  and teacher questions.....separating the two.....interesting!

Learner questions - requests,  rhetoric, inquiry

                                 Learner Questions

Requests                      Inquiry                           Rhetoric

Primary           Fertile, Essential, Inquiry, Rich,  Reflective

layer

high

Intermediary    Diagnostic analytical evaluative questions

Low       Open closed Fat  skinny Key Search

                                    Information Seeking Questions

layer

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.