2008 Summary!!

Well done to our staff here at Poroutawhao School. Thank you all for your dedication to the process of inquiry! Check back here early 2009 for our goals and where we are headed for 2009.

Room One Inquiry Journey

I have introduced the Learning Intersection this term, which really helped me and my children totally embrace the Inquiry process. Everything seemed to just click together. We used Solo taxanomy with our speech writing which then clicked into place with the inquiry process. As a class we kept referring back to the stages we were at on the Inquiry intersection for both our speeches and inquiry topic - Crunch 'n' Munch. Children were reflecting on these stages and self assessing what was happening. It was great to see! The one thing that stuck out for the children is that we needed to apply our inquiry in a better way.

Goal for Room 3 2009

To introduce the intersection again to individuals, especially the newcomers. Talk with the children more about the Understanding aspect as they tended to want to move round before they had truly grasped found information.

2009 Goals for Room 4

1. Continue working with small ability groups rather than whole class
2. Give more time to apply learning at the end of term.

Room 3s Inquiry Journey

It took awhile to get it set up but the children have now grasped the intersecion concept and really enjoyed having cars to move around. Some even went around the intersection twice having reflected on their question and the need for nmore indepth question/answer research. All in all a success and ready to follow up again with next year. Yeh!

Room 4s Inquiry Journey

Wow!! this term we introduced our new inquiry model. The children really enjoyed the concept of moving around the intersection and grasped the idea quickly. I chose to flag the whole class inquiry this term and focus on group questions that contributed to a whole class task. I flet that this worked so much better. The children really enjoyed watching their symbol (in this case a food picture) travel around the intersection and were able to talk about it freely.

Yay...the cars are parked and I'm ready for a holiday!!!

ICT Cluster Day 4th Dec

Another great cluster day! It was great to hear and be able to relate to other school's inquiry processes. It was very nerve racking presenting myself, but I got there in the end.
I have really enjoyed being a part of the ICT cluster this half year. I have learnt so much, and there are so many different ideas to take hold of that I want to try myself!
Also another very productive meeting with Jan yesterday, setting some next steps for next year, and outlining some things to do to help staff start the new year with a bang. Thanks Jan, for all your help and support. You rock!

Curriculum Day 17th November

We held a teacher only day today to continue our journey with inquiry and our new curriculum process. First up, Neil recapped our journey to date in regards to the designing of our Poroutawhao School curriculum. This was fantastic as it created a sense of pride and excitement within the staff at what we had already achieved in such a short time. For our new staff it gave an idea as to why we do things the way we do. We then reviewed our curriculum folders, and made some minor changes to these. I then shared our inquiry journey to date (minus a few bits as the staff were aware of most of this process), and gave an overview of what inquiry looks like at Poroutahwao School. (See back here soon to see the movie that goes with this!!)
We then continued our review of the inquiry matrix...and FINISHED it!!! (until next time anyway!) This is now much more concise and everyone is happy to try it Term 1 09 and then we will review it again to make changes where necessary. A fantastic effort, team!
The afternoon gave a great opportunity to plan for Term 1 09 inquiry. We have chosen an inquiry into why we have rules and laws, with our focus being on the applying part of the intersection.

ICT Cluster Day 5th Nov

It was fantastic to be able to have the opportunity to visit our own cluster schools today. It was very encouraging to see where everyone was up to in their journey, and to reflect on where Poroutawhao are, and to see the similarities in the processes. It was great to see inquiry models emerging and I love the way that each schools model reflects who they are as a school, and things that are important to them as a community. A worthwhile day...it also gave me some thoughts towards our own school's presentation next cluster day!!

Inquiry in room 3 term 4

We are about to begin using our intersection for work on our focus of designing a healthy lunchbox under the title Crunch and Munch. Currently the children have been looking at food labels and the ingredients in those items of food and discussion around where sugar falls in that list and what are some of the other ingredients found on those lists.
I need to create some cars as we need to all start at the Explore car park and then the children will be able to move around as they become more involved with their inquiry.
I believe it is really important that the exploration is done as a whole class first because the discussion allows some of the children who have difficulty moving from the unistructural level to the multistrctural a chance to hear and think about ideas raised by others further down the thinking model.

Inquiry Development Update

Kia ora,

Just an update from me regarding the development of our Inquiry model and its subsequent implementation throughout our school. Pleasing recent developments include:
1) visual wall displays of Poroutawhao Inquiry Intersection model now in most classrooms. After discussions, these will be used with the children in a consistent way across the school,
2) presentation of Inquiry model guidelines which explain what each dimension of our model actually looks like in our class, ie what you may see when any of these areas becomes an Inquiry focus
3) progress has been made with revising the assessment matrix so that it more accurately represents the Inquiry work we are doing,
4) Further progress in the use of SOLO taxonomy as wa way that we can see what our lerarning looks like and what we can do to improve.

Reinforcement from our ICT cluster facilitator once again assures Fiona and myself that we are leading the school in the right direction. I am satisfied that everyone is also fully behind the direction we are taking. Our teachers are continuing to be challenged and in general, they are responding. Sometimes we just have to be patient and wait for them but they are in general, on board.

I once again acknowledge the lead teacher work that Fiona Mitchell is taking. She is very much a cutting edge teacher now and we are all learning from her.

Don't forget to blog often. It is a record of this professional development.

Kia ora

Neil Hirini
Principal

Inquiry Progress Update

We had a fantastic staff meeting yesterday where we made great progress with our matrix as our assessment tool for the inquiry process. Our model is now finalised and up and running in all classes. The children are responding to it really well. SOLO has also now been implemented into all classes, and teachers are finding that the children are catching on to the thinking easier than what we thought. We have used SOLO as the basis for a self assessment on our school value of participation, which was our focus from last term. The children in Room 2 first of all defined what participation was and then focused on their own participation in the school production. They self assessed this against the rubrics that we created as a staff for this purpose. As we get more confident ourselves we will involve the children more in the construction of the rubrics.
Above is our finalsed inquiry model, which is based on our learning theme of a journey along the highway (being situated on State Highway 1).
We have also created a handbook to work alongside our model so that as a staff we all know what each stage means.

Michael Pohl Day Seminar

As a staff we went and listened to Michael Pohl on Inquiry Learning at the Event Centre, in Levin. I found the seminar very interesting. Michael spoke about aspects of the Learning Inquiry process. He backed up our ideas of inquiry, which we are already thinking about and trying to incorprate into our classroom programmes.

The one thing that I did worry about with Michael's seminar is that he spoke about Bloom's Taxanomy which confused me as we are focussing on using Solo Taxonomy with our inquiry model. Both taxonomies are similar and can be applied in the same way of Inquiry Learning. I would have liked to hear more on other taxonomies rather than just the main taxonomy of Bloom's. I was hoping for ideas on the use of Solo with inquiry.

The one thing that I would like to find out more about as a result of the seminar are when to use the tools used beside the thinking skills of Inquiry Learning. The big question I have and would like to find out is whether you use a variety of tools at various levels, as mentioned by Michael or do you use one thinking tool such as De Bono's hats and use it until well used and then start introducing another tools such as Tony Ryan's keys?

Fabulous Room 4's Inquiry Journey

This term our focus has been on self assessment and linking that to solo. We used freeze frames to retell parts of the well known fairy tale "The Gingerbread Man". The children enjoyed being creative and using there bodies as a form of art. After introducing the idea of looking at our selves and talking about the idea of self assessment the children really enjoyed the opportunity to not only improve themselves but to have input in helping others.

From there we talked about solo and the journey of learning something new. We talked about where we would sit on the solo model in relation to self assessment. To my amazement the children got it and came up with some fab self assessments, used what they wrote to place themselves on the solo model and produce awesome freeze frames.

Term 3 Inquiry development

Kia ora,

With regard to our current ICT development goals my major thrust this term has been to recognise the fact that we have enough PD and internal capacity to achieve the goals that we set for the year. One of the primary focus areas has been the continued development of our Inquiry model. I was heartenend by the fact that the language of this model has been, to varying degrees and in varying ways, introduced to our students. The term inquiry and a basic understanding of this, has been slowly embedded in the school. To celebrate this I was very keen for teachers to share their current classroom practices in terms of delivery of Inquiry which now forms an integarl part of our curriculum. This has been happening in in school PD sessions with each teacher challenged to share their work in this area.

Through continued exposure to other schoolwide Inquiry models through the ICT development programme I am absolutely certain that path we have taken will meet our school's needs.

Further to the above, next term I do want to achieve a consistent presentation of the model in all our classes so that Inquiry can be easily referred to. We also need to make absolutely certain we all have a shared understanding of the different dimensions to our inquiry model and our set of assessment matrix indicators needs to be fine tuned.

Well done and many thanks to Fiona for stepping into the lead teacher role. She has embraced Inquiry and is now presenting a highly effective model in her class. She is truly leading the way for our school and other now turn to her for advice.

It is hoped that we can get everyone to a comparable stage by the end of the year.

Neil Hirini

Michael Pohl Seminar

Kia ora,

I refer to our day at Coley Street on the 11th Sept. 2008 with Michael Pohl. A wonderful opportunity to meet and then work with such a notable educational practioner. Thoroughly enjoyed his manner and the way he comminicated with us. This was highlighted by the fact that he wasn't promoting his beliefs as " the one and only way" but presented his ideas as one of many that educationalists could grasp. Having said that, his focus on Blooms Taxonomy suggests that he thinks this is the most powerful tool.

My first impression of the presentation was that it served to remind me of the many number of models that could be adopted in order to enhance the skill of thinking in the learning process. It took me back to my teacher's college days when many of these models were introduced and covered in depth. For me, they are all saying the same thing, only in differeent words. Learning is far more greatly enhanced if we actually do more in our minds with the information that unfolds.

I was very interested in his schoolwide thinking model whereby a number of different tools be used at diferent ages acroos a school. For a school that is still grappling to introduce one model effectively I didn't see us pursuing something like this for a while yet.

Disapppointed not to see the model we have adopted,ie SOLO taxonomy,metioned in the programme. We have made the committment to implementthis at our school in the first instance and although not promoted in the day, we are happy this is taking us where we want to go for now.

I once again feel privileged to have been part of this day and had exposure to an educational guru.

Neil Hirini

Michael Pohl Cluster Day

So much stuff to ponder on from today! Some points:
- We need to create a culture of thinking within our school and individual classes...we need to think about thinking!
- There were lots of different thinking tools discussed today, and I am very excited how it all fits into SOLO as the big umbrella.
- We need to have school wide thinking tools that are used, under the umbrella of SOLO, to enhance students thinking processes (using SOLO, thinking hats, and maybe Thinkers Keys?)
- Lots of little things that I can't wait to use in my classroom, and ultimately share with rest of staff...introduce SOLO as a visual representation on inquiry planning (thanks Jan for our talk about this today too!), further develop the reading activities I use in class to be more generic for use by other staff (based on SOLO), develop CAMPER stations school wide to use with information part of inquiry process, and trial the use of a Question Map to generate questions for next terms inquiry.
Hmmm...not much to do!!

Meeting with Jan

Thanks Jan, for your help today! We took a stocktake of where Poroutawhao staff were at with our inquiry journey. We have worked hard on developing our model, and a next step for us is to implement school wide, to trail and test it, and make changes as we need to. We have a PD meeting on Wednesday, at which I will be presenting a report on where we are at with ICT integration, inquiry processes and SOLO integration. Part of this session will include a survey to better assess where everyone is at. I will post again after this meeting....

I Can, We Can Cluster Day

Thanks to Muratai School for opening up your school to us and sharing your journey. It was fantastic to see the consistency across the whole school, in relation to the inquiry model. This is the next step for our school, as we have now developed a model to use, it is now time to implement this school wide to begin to develop the consistency we saw today. It was very exciting to see the children able to discuss with us what they thought about inquiry and their own personal learning journeys. I am looking forward to following this same process next week with our kids to see where our school is at.

Milestone 1 - 2008

Well done everyone. Our first milestone for the, "I Can' We Can" ICT development cluster has now been completed. It most certainly outlines the fantastic progress we are making in achiving our primary ICT goal for the year of shifting from learning about and with ICT to learning through ICT. This has mainly come about by your true belief in the power of the ICT tool to improve current learning outcomes for our students and the importance of this tool for their future lives. It has then cme about by your willingness to take on new ideas, when convinced of the value of them, and to work hard to implement change. I look forward to continuing on with our current development focus which is the analysis and assessment of what currently is Inquiry in our school which I am sure will lead to improvements in this area. A special acknowledgemt to our lead teachers. Thanks a lot.

Milestone Summary

Why Inquiry?

• To engage students
• To teach transferable skills (such as finding and applying information) at a deep level so as to enable students to truly be lifelong learners.

Action Plan

• A schoolwide understanding of our definition of 'Inquiry', so staff and students have a common understanding and can clearly articulate from year 0-8 what inquiry is. Part of this is also using common vocab. This became clear when asking students. They had some understanding but not a clear, consistent understanding across the school.
• A schoolwide model that is collectively understood and I think needs a visual element to help children.
• To continue to refine our planning of a schoolwide inquiry unit each term.

What are the outcomes or expected outcomes?

• For students to be more engaged in learning.
• For students to be independent learners with skills they can transfer throughout life.

Inquiry Staff Meetings

We have held 2 staff meetings this term that have focussed on inquiry. Our goal with this was to revise our inquiry matrix. We found that we in fact needed to go back a couple of steps and make sure we have an inquiry model that is generic throughout classrooms and that is understood clearly by all staff and students.

Our next step (as Fiona has mentioned previously) is to work on this model and then the assessment matrix will flow more easily.

To assist with this staff have had the opportunity to look at a variety of Inquiry, Integrated Learning and Action Learning models for ideas both online via Del.icio.us and in a wall display in the staff room.

ICT Cluster Day 22nd May

Thanks to Coley St for sharing your journey with us, and the paths you have taken along the way. After reflecting about today, we (Neil, Tab and myself) have discussed our next steps, and where we want our school to be heading. A main concept that came through for us is the need to develop a visual representation of our inquiry model that is consistent throughout the school. This will help us and the kids to focus on inquiry and what each step is for them. The idea of putting this into a roundabout picture has been discussed, as this fits in with our curriculum model of a highway. Tab and I are going to present this concept at our next professional development in 2 weeks time. Work has already begun on developing this concept!
We would also like to work on developing some planning templates for our kids to use, and discussing the different levels of inquiry and where we want to head with this.
We are also going to work on setting aside a teacher only day to go as a whole staff to visit other schools.

Term 1, 2008

Congratulations to all our wonderful staff here at Poroutawhao School for continuing on with the implementation of our localised school curriculum suitably titled, "Poroutawhao School Learning Highway". It warms my heart to see the ideas that we have "thrashed out" over the last two years or so come together into a framework that is truly focussed primarily on the needs of our students, modern educational theory and our own community values. Further to this, I am absolutely certain that we have a compliant curriculum that meets the requirements of the NZ Curriculum. I look forward to having this reinforced by the likes of ERO at some stage.

Well done for your work on our term 1, integrated unit relating to Heroes. I was thrilled to know that our children can now decide for themselves who or what a hero is to them. I was also thrilled to see and be part of the myriad of learning activities that helped them reach this point. Our planning, teaching and assessment work, incorporating our new Inquiry Tools, ICT and SOLO taxonomy are becoming more powerful and effective everytime we do this.

Keep up the good work. I think your all awesome.

Neil H.

Amanda's posting

We are all busy in Room One looking at our new unit on "Bugs" we are finding this extremely interesting, but challenging as we have to tie in a science experiment into our bugs unit. We have finally finished our Heroes unit and are very proud of our projects. Come into the classroom and view these on the wall.

Room 4 Inquiry

Room 4 have been learning all about Heroes. In term one we talked about being responsible learners. To help us decide what a responsible learner is we used a Definition map. We used pictures that represent different kinds of behaviours. In groups the children talked about and sorted the pictures using a Define Map. Below are some of our children working together to get the job done. After we sorted and glued the pictures everyone wrote a definition of what they think a responsible learner is....


(pictures to come)

Room5

I think that Room 5's inquiry is going well. The children are starting to use the language of our matrix and are understanding the process of our Poroutawhao Inquiry. I am finding the presenting aspect tricky as the kids are not so independent and need a lot of teacher support. I'd like to work on the presenting side of the matrix more.

Inquiry with Jan-Marie Kellow

"We only think when we are confronted with problems.

John Dewey

"This workshop helped to reinforce some of the things we are doing in the inquiry field and also gave some food for thought regarding next steps.

Musings.

• That some concepts are more efficiently taught by explicit teaching. There is generally some base knowledge that it is just easier to 'tell' the students. I think this fits in with the 'knowledge attack' part where we are actually 'giving' them some base info. One school described this stage as the way we used to 'cover the AO's'. This then gives a base for children to formulate deep, rich inquiry questions. (Viscount School) I feel this type of thing would have enhanced my classes current Inquiry.
• Taking Action. It was mentioned that this is a debated part of some models and that not all inquires need an action, that to communicate what they have learnt is enough. I guess the challenge is to create our model that is flexible enough to accommodate various ways of taking action that work with the unit. Is communicating your new found knowledge not a form of taking action?

My ideas for next steps:

• A schoolwide understanding of our definition of 'Inquiry', so staff and students have a common understanding and can clearly articulate from year 0-8 what inquiry is. Part of this is also using common vocab. This became clear when asking students. They had some understanding but not a clear, consistent understanding across the school.
• A schoolwide model that is collectively understood and I think needs a visual element to help children.

Room 2

My class are really into our thinking skills (SOLO Taxonomy). They enjoy and are getting better at self assessing where their thoughts are at against SOLO. Having this model has helped to target our inquiry process as it gives something to refer to to help the kids construct deeper understanding about the topic. Some of them are starting to relate everything we discuss back to themselves, to see how it applies to them. They love to compare and contrast things! Our next step, or a step we need anyway, is a solid inquiry model to follow that we can refer to that is based on our matrix but maybe more visual and user friendly.

Ask the kids...

Where we are now.

I thought I better make an initial comment about where I think we are now before we leap into the term and we're not here anymore.

Our staff put in a lot of work last year trialling an inquiry model for topic. We found we loved it and the kids loved it. We are now trying to adapt and refine the model to suit us. We were lucky enough to be working with a teacher from West End school in Palmerston North for Atol and based our initial attempts on their work. Over time things have changed as we have found our own way.

We changed our curriclum delivery so that our inquiry is based around a curriculum area each term whilst still including all areas. We struggled with this a little and have now found that having a 'rich question' to start the unit engages the children and enables them to have more input as we develop subsidiary questions. We have also just included a 'Taking Action' stage to the model which I think is crucial to developing learners that make a difference in the world. We plan as a whole staff and then use the plan as a 'guide' highlighting and adding as things change.

This is the model in my class. As yet it is not generic in all classes but hopefully this will happen. My thoughts are more of a cyclical model as we are always refining and re-questioning but... that will come later.

We have also developed an inquiry matrix (inspired by our Atol work) that we work from.

Our staff recently attended a SOLO workshop and we are begining to incorportae that in our inquiry work to enhance thinking skills.

So, thats where we are.

Welcome

Welcome to our new blog! Jan made us do it!!