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!!