Tony Ryan @ Birchwood - 4th March 2011
Tony met with a team of seven staff. This team included senior management and three classroom teachers. Our focus was developing our Term 1/2 unit plan on Energy. The goal was to add ‘zing, edge, crack, snap and pop’ to engage our students in this topic.
We were using a planning template that was new to our school. It was developed during our curriculum focus last year.
During our session we focused on developing our understanding of good inquiry (both teacher and student), questioning (intellectual rigor/the rubber band), coding, reflection and how to use a range of different thinking tools/strategies to promote discussion. We also explored a range of web based tools/resources (intel framework/webquests) and the use of google applications/search tools.
Discussion around our inquiry model has led us to rethink our current model and investigate others for our school. This process will also allow time for teachers to develop their understanding of the process, try a class led inquiry and for the school to create the model collaboratively based on our experiences.
Next steps for our school:
- Reflect on current practice - inquiry model (looking at Tony Ryan’s inquiry questions), engaging students in the first 2 minutes, student voice supporting/guiding planning
- Modifying our planning format
- Effective use of classroom strategies - model these for other staff and use in our practice
- Explore effective questioning to prompt higher level thinking - Use of coding - demanding more from our teachers and students
- Investigate different thinking tools to integrate into our inquiry
Comments
Good post Anna, thourough reporting. Hope your energy unit plan goes well!
Andrew
The teacher and student inquiries are a good focus... while the student inquiry may be curriculum driven, it would be great to see the teaching inquiry, student focussed on improving pedagogy and practice. Know any good models of this??
Did Tony's visit result in any changes to your curriculum development or framework?
Good post - thanks for sharing Anna.
Thanks for the feedback Isaac (and Andrew), the 'model' we are exploring is based on a set of questions provided by Tony on Inquiry.
Student Inquiry !??
Q. What's our purpose for doing this inquiry?
Q. What do we already know about this issue?
Q. What are our questions?
Q. What learning steps will we take?
Q. How will we do useful research?
Q. How will we share our findings?
Teacher Inquiry !??
Q. What's our purpose for doing this inquiry?
Q. What do we already know about this issue?
Q. What are our questions?
Q. What learning steps will we take?
Q. How will we do useful research?
Q. How will we share our findings?
SPOT the difference.....
In so far as our curriculum, we have decided not to proceed with the Energy topic at this stage. Instead, each teacher is exploring an inquiry directly related to their student's interests, based on the above questions and influenced by other inquiry models. At our last staff meeting Anna reported back on Trevor Bond's session at Rotorua on the SAUCE model and Isaac shared a series of readings which looked at inquiry in general from his overseas experience.
The 'inquiry model' which has been included (at this stage) in our curriculum (we have discovered) is more of a research model, which would fit quite nicely into one of the stages of an inquiry. It is very much a case of 'watch this space'.