Inquiry Celebration

Wow, we've reached the end of our first shared inquiry - What Would Make a Great a NZ Holiday? Today, the school is broken into three groups to share their learning with 3-4 other classes from across the levels of the school. Room 17 ( Year 1) had a great time camping at Papamoa (it's a place quite close to Miss Hepburn's office!) - they "slept" in a tent and played on the beach and went swimming! Room 13 (Year 3-4) shared lots of information about their journey through the STRIVE model and what they were doing at each stage. They learned a lot about various NZ places and the great activities you can do there. Mr Shekleton is playing his role as entertainer in between items! Room 14 (Year 5-6) have shared their findings in a Keynote presentation. They talked about their questions and the discussions they had as a class to choose the direction their inquiry took. They have created brochures to advertise the places they would choose to visit in Christchurch and also present the itinerary. Room 11 (Year 3-4) also shared what they did at each stage of the model. They have focused particularly on sharing their brochures and posters which are part of the Voice stage of the model. They used Pages as the software to create the brochures and established some shared success criteria to evaluate their work by. Room 1 (Year 1) have chosen to focus on our local area of the Horowhenua. They shared their discussions through the STRIVE model e.g. what is a holiday? Mr Baker has interviewed children about their various opinions and answers on the inquiry questions - e.g. what would you take on your outing or where in Horowhenua would you go? They have also shared their art work arising from the places they would visit. It's great to see the way that all classes have done things differently, going far and wide (and not so far) on their "holidays" but everyone has engaged children in using the new STRIVE Levin North inquiry learning model.

Charting our progress

It is exciting to be sitting with a group who are sharing their journey of where they are at. One room is ready to start their journey, another group is tent camping...how exciting!

Great hear a new entrant room using utube to support their investigation. The idea of turning their room into a TENT.....WOW!

Another group is going to have their children visiting different places  around the Horowhenua.

Another group has spent a lot of time looking at what makes good brochure.

Making up an itinerary has been a key focus for another group.

I am looking forward to seeing all this work coming to fruition.

We then got onto  ideas for Voice - these included - postcards, posters, bochures, itinerary, oral presentation, drama , role play,  podcasts, radio commercial, big huge labs, flickr, dumpr (online graphics), real life presentation, iweb,  parent involvement etc

Tracking Our Unit

As I wander around the rooms I see lots of evidence of Inquiry in Action....I wanted to make sure that this is a focus in our foyer ( a very small space)....so yes I have finally done this. We need to make sure that evidence of our model can be seen throughout the school....as I often say  - so that we are all on the same page. 

The Curriculum Day we had with Mary chamberlain and Lester Flockton gave us much to reflect on...particularly in terms of authentic learning.

The other thing that touched was the need to be finding ways to involve parents in what we are doing. This can be said also of Inquiry. As Principal I need to make sure that I continue to find ways to share our Inquiry journey with our parents. I think our sharing that we have planned is going to be very important....we need to get this right...we need to take the time; give ourselves the time to truly celebrate and reflect on this wee journey that we have undertaken this term. Yes this is something that I need to provide the leadership in....as I have said before ....watch this space!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Spark and Task

On the first day back we had our Spark  -which consisted of a 25 minute assembly. We the staff had fun in the process. The play "Are We there Yet?" had the children responding...after all how often do you see the staff acting out a scene that they could identify with ?!!!!!!!!!!

All the staff dressed up as if they were going on a summer holiday and yes sang "We're all going on a Summer holiday" Darryl put together a clever slide show that had the children wondering....

One day on we are having our staff meeting on Spark and Task. Such a wide range of strategies have been employed by the staff. Sharing is an integral part to ensuring that we all get the most out of the process.

We did a PMI to reflect on the Spark - this will really help us when it comes time to planning our next unit. One thing that bothered me was that we left the support staff out. Letters were sent to our key relievers last term inviting them to the Spark launch. It was fortunate that we realised our mistake and we were able to invite them to be part of this. I believe if our Strive model is to be successful then we need to work hard to bring everyone on board.

We did an activity to develop questioning skills . Staff were introduced to fat and skinny questions.

We recognise the need to upskill our questioning skills and in turn our teaching strategies to enhance questioning skills.

Watch this space!!!!!!!!!

uLearn 2008

Some of the workshops have provided some great websites that may help you with your Inquiry:

• circave.com and dipity.com for timelines
• bubblecomment.com...this is an interesting one where you can actualy put a bubble (your face and you speaking!!!) on the student's working...quite an effective way of comunicating with your students
• You may like to check some of these otheres out glogster.com    wix.com     voicethread.com     weebly.com    slide.com    bliptv    teachertube.com     clustrmap    boomp3.com   daftdoggy.com    vocaroo.com - yes theree is a heap there but some great tools there

I have also gone on to some other great websites - 

Bucklands Beach has done some great work on eportfolios

eisforlearning.wikispaces.com  

fendalton openair school

Tony ryan website - has all his thinking keys there....lots of free downloads

Yes so much....you may like to browse!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So much to take in

ulearn08

Will Richardson and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach - spoke about Building a community of practice - the best ones  are the ones that are co=owned  -it is about sharing....we need to move away from imposed norms...co-creative... isn't that we are aspiring for? We have started with a model and what we want now is for people to be taking ownership. There are four distinct stages

1. Sharing ...

2 .cooperate

3. collaborate

4. act collectively for change

I can see strong parallels to what we are trying to achieve at North. At each stage we need to build heaps of opportunities for sharing.

Our timeline allows for this. We have linked the timeline to our staff meeting overview ... I believe this is where I can show strong leadership and perhaps keep us all sane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Inquiry Learning Launch

We've spent time with our staff at another staff meeting sharing an "Inquiry Learning Support Booklet", perhaps a first draft of our bible of inquiry learning! It sets out what is to happen at each stage of the S.T.R.I.V.E. model. This document was well received and should give teachers plenty of ideas, which of course will be built on with their own experiences and inspirations. Next we brainstormed how to launch our Term 4 Inquiry - Are We There Yet? The challenge to staff for our launch event is to have fun and participate with enthusiasm in the initial SPARK assembly! I suspect this challenge will be easy for some and more.... well, challenging for others! I'm not allowed to give away too much though. We've also shared our staff meeting presentation with the Board of Trustees on Monday night and it went down a treat - the board members were genuinely excited by the opportunities presented by the introduction of an inquiry learning approach.

Michael Pohl

Michael challenged us to think about what we are doing and to in a sense be able to justify what we are doing! So why teach thinking.....yes that was an excellent springboard as we discussed what we do at North and more importantly need to be doing at North. 

Neil touches on this in his reflections. For me it is about getting us all paddling the same waka  -so we need to be "talking the same talk!". We have chosen the Hats as a major thinking tool for our school...but then he challenged us re our level of expertise and very quickly it became apparent that our expertise is some what lacking...so this will need to be a strong focus for us as we implement "Strive!

Michael Pohl seminar (Neil's take)

Michael Pohl Seminar - Coley Street 11/9/08

This session was hugely useful and timely as we ponder the new LNS curriculum vision and inquiry learning model - thinking is a core component of both these things. Today was thought provoking and challenging for me as a class teacher - what am I doing to foster a culture of thinking in my class? Some things but I'm nowhere near as committed to it as I should be. As well as the thoughts below I got a lot from the modelling of use of various tools, some new to me and some I haven't used much or for a while. Why is important to develop a culture of thinking in the classroom and school? Why teach thinking?

• John Hattie - “teaching thinking strategies” and “giving good feedback” had high positive effects on student achievement.
• The amount of information in the world is growing exponentially, therefore we need to think more and think critically.
• Thinking is one of our key competencies! This is one good reason for developing a culture of thinking.

Principle of Abandonment In order to move forward, we need to be able to leave something behind (rather than adding something to the backpack). - How would we at North cope with cutting something we’re good at/have done for ages/are comfortable with in order to try something new? Some thoughts/key ideas

• Important that teachers AND students become good questioners.
• Balance of divergent and convergent thinking activities is good - (wide - deep thinking)
• To think is to question (Dewey)
• It is important to be able to communicate one’s thinking (not just be able to think).
• Establish a language of thinking - get them young! Pervade the class with this language, visual prompts, etc
• Plan and Programme with a Thinking focus
• Share ideas/models etc - pass them on to students.
• Make the teaching of thinking manageable.
• We want to see good thinking transferred from the class to the playground and out of school time and as a lifelong habit.
• If we are going to do deBono’s Hats or any thinking tools, they need to be thoroughly understood (all hats) not just superficially.
• We need to help teachers see the long term, global, sizeable benefit of having a thinking curriculum and seeing that it is manageable and achievable.
• We should use SCUMPS in our trial unit in Term 4. SCAMPER/SCUMPS acronyms can be adapted to different contexts e.g. music, character analysis. Acronyms help make these tools more easy to remember and use.
• Questions and Questioning are the most powerful technologies of all (Jamie McKenzie)
• We as teachers should reflect on our use of closed and open questions and whether they are requiring divergent or convergent thinking.
• What matters more than the answers is the questions...
• We must involve students in the previous teacher’s domain of planning and questioning to encourage student engagement and student ownership of their learning.

Inquiry and Thinking We still need to start with a guided inquiry approach (e.g. with a contentious issue) Students can create question chains to get to higher order or deeper thinking - what if and how questions. It is really important to get questioning right in an inquiry model - take time over it, vary the questions, probe to get good questions. Also, make the questions those that will lead to new learning. It is good to get students devising their own questions as it leads to increased ownership. It is also important to build the skills that will be used in successive inquiries.

Inquiry Learning 1st Staff Meeting

We had our first Inquiry Staff meeting in Week 5 of Term 3. Staff had been directed to readings on Inquiry Learning online at www.inquiringmind.co.nz. Several activities and discussions took place: 1. What is Inquiry Learning? i.e. What are the key features? What does IBL look like in the classroom? What do we know about it? 2. What are some of the features of a traditional teaching model in a classroom? 3. What are some of the features of an inquiry learning model? In an inquiry learning classroom, what is the role of the teacher? And what is the role of the learner? JPGs recording our thinking are embedded in this post for you to view. We were pleased with our team of dedicated teachers and what they came up with - they showed a good basic understanding of inquiry, essential for our launch in Term 4.