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.