Teacher Only Day 3/11/08

Our staff chose to meet again on this day and finish later in the year to ensure we had our Inquiry Model in place with plenty of time to ensure all staff were ready to start the new year. We looked back on what we had achieved on Friday and made a few little changes to represent the thinking that has taken place over the weekend. We then went through and made a set of students notes to go with the teacher notes. After a much needed drink at morning tea time we continued with the appendices that we needed to add. This included different thinking tools, stratgies, graphic organisers, skills to be taught, etc.

This day produced some differing opinions on how this document was to go together. After further discussions as well as disagreements, we compromised on a solution that all agreed on.

We also worked on a planning sheet for all teaching staff to use. This also produced discussion on what needed to be included. We drafted a model for all staff to use. We decided that all staff needed to have input as all will be using but we now have a starting point. .

Teacher Only Day 31/10/08

Today our staff met to look at the new curriculum document on the day the Ministry set aside. We chose not to meet up with other Levin schools and to spend the time as a staff to organise and write our own inquiry learning document. We split into two teams with one team looking at Literacy, Numeracy, PE & Health, and The Arts with the other team looking at Inquiry. We were both on the Inquiry Team. We started by looking at a Inquiry Learning Policy for our school. We looked at Coley Street's model as well as other schools and developed our own rationale, purpose and guidelines. We then used this to develop our model. We had a range of models which we took information off and developed our own to introduce next year. We also had Michael Pohls books on hand. One of the staff came up with "Stars" as icons and the galaxy. We liked the 5 cornered star so fit our Inquiry Model into 5 steps to fit Ohau School. We then added the tails to link them together. We also wrote up a set of definitions for each stage and a set of teachers notes to go with these. It was a very profitable day with interesting discussions and points of interests.

Staff Meeting

We held a staff meeting today and were looking at possible overarching ideas for next year. We came up with a few different ones but decided that
"Its a small, small world" with a Social Studies major first, then science and lastly technology. We decided on having 3 Inquiries over the year bridging terms and two mini units with a focus on The Arts as well as Health/PE-PA at the start and the end of the year. This enables us to include the students in our planning as well as finish our inquiries before reporting to parents. It also means we have time at the start of each term to organise and take on board the Inquiry topics more fully.

U-Learn Conference - 7th - 10th October 2008

After our proposed shopping day before the conference was to start was cut short due to the weather and late departure from Wellington, we arrived in Christchurch to bright sunshine and warm weather. We made our way to our motel and registered at the Convention Centre in due course. The conference was opened on the Wednesday by Chris Carter with a view from the Government. Will Richardson and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach followed with some inspirational ideas. Bruce McIntyre responded on behalf of the business sector amid yawns and quiet chatter. He was not the most inspirational of speakers. Following the opening, we went to our first two breakouts. The first was on using ICT in the classroom from a school in Auckland. We got to converse with students from his class online but got the impression all was not as it seems. Our second breakout was listening to two young teachers from a Christchurch School talking about the Inquiry Process in their classrooms. This was interesting and provided guidelines ideas for us to take back to our school. The Keynote speaker on Thursday was Steven Carden. He spoke for over an hour with no notes and spoke from the heart. Very enjoyable and inspirational. Further breakouts that we went to followed the same lines. We will look at attending breakouts from keynote speakers when we go to Learning at Schools in February. This way we may achieve more value on our learnings. Overall the conference was enjoyable but not as inspirational as we wanted. We got back and produced a photostory of our journey which we shared with others at school as well as some ideas to shape to our school requirements.

Michael Pohl Workshop

KTB, Col and J9 attended the full day workshop with Michael Pohl at Coley Street. All other staff went to the afterschool workshop at the Events Centre. This way all staff had the same exposure with regards to Michael's thoughts and ideas. We looked at creating a culture of thinking in the classroom, developing a whole school scope and sequence thinking tools, practical aspects of thinking in the classroom, and questioning. We came away with some good resources (thanks KTB for encouraging us to purchase his books and CD's!!) and lots of ideas and inspiration for classroom practice. His enthusiasism and well grounded approaches to learning are infectious.

Jan Thomas Visit

Jan came for a visit yesterday. We discussed a range of ideas - here is some of them:
Develop a draft model by end of Term 3
Create a support book for the model with staff by the end of Term 4
Major focus for Term 4 is preparing for Inquiry in Term 1 09
Choose overarching big idea for 09
Choose a schoolwide set of thinking tools in order to develop a common language throughout the school.
Ulearn 08 - select appropriate workshops to help with all this
Planning template to be designed before the end of Term 4 in draft format - once trialled we can then have this loaded on to ETap.

Cluster visit to Muratai School

Wow !! What an inspirational school. We were greeted by a well organised and confident team of students in a powhiri. Ani and Neil did our cluster proud with their response. The students confidently escorted us to our destinations and all students that we spoke to over the day had a reasonably clear understanding of the Inquiry process and could articulate excellent responses to our questions. Students were used as panels of presenters whom we were then able to question after each presentation on different aspects of their individual inquirys. We did get the impression that the school's students had a large proportion of good internet access at home and a good proportion of the inquiry was completed at home with the emphasis in class on learning the skills necessary. We came back to school inspired with some new ideas and approaches to consider for our school.

Jan Marie Kellow - Cluster Workshop

The day spent with Jan was enlightening. It showed us a new perspective of thoughts on Inquiry as well as cementing thoughts we already had. She started with asking us what we thought "INQUIRY" was and the different skills associated with it. Some of these we already were aware of but we learnt of others

Inquiry - Problem solving in school

Jan Thomas visited today and suggested some strategies and processes to help us and the school move forward in developing our Inquiry model. We discussed processes already in place and next steps to move towards our draft trial model by the end of the year. We need to create a support booklet for staff - this can be an altered version of Coley Streets book adapted to the needs of our school. We need to develop a schoolwide set of thinking maps and graphic organisers (electronic would be better). She also suggested a planning template be designed in draft format by the end of Term 4 to be used in ETap - a friendlier version than what we have been using.

2008 Milestone 5 Due

According to Jan this was supposed to be reasonably easy and it was. It was an excellent time for reflection on where we have come from and where we are headed and what we have achieved to date. Keeping the blog up to date was a plus and we must keep on doing this. Inquiry learning is a big task to undertake and we need to have all staff onboard and thinking similar thoughts on the way it is introduced.

Coley Street Visit

It was great to go into rooms yesterday to see an Inquiry model in place and functioning. I was particularly interested in the assessment practices for Inquiry. Our lovely young escort explained how this works, using the differnt rubrics. It is always exciting to see new ideas but it is also such a great help, as we move towards an Inquiry Delivery. We arrive with certain ideas and leave with a completely new perspective. Much fodder for thought.

It is daunting but it won't force me to retire any time yet!!

Thanks Coley Street, for sharing this with us.

Coley Street Classroom Visits

We have just toured around several classrooms at Coley Street School looking at Inquiry Learning in action. Each class we went to was at a different stage of their Inquiry and at different levels of Inquiry - teacher directed, guided, pure but all classes used the similar tools such as Fogartys, deBonos, SOLO and used the same rubrics for assessment of Inquiry. Our tour guide Sarah was knowledgeable on Inquiry and could answer most of our questions. This tour helped clarify and cement our Inquiry ideas. The assessment of skills and processes rather than knowledge is a hurdle that ERO has accepted. Their reports do not have science, health, social studies and technology listed, only the skills and stages from Inquiry. A very enjoyable and informative experience which has generated lots of ideas.

ICT Cluster Workshop

Today Richard and Jan presented the journey Coley Street has taken with Inquiry Learning. It appears to have started with the purchase of "Student Speak", an oral language kit to help build the oral language skills of children at Coley Street School (Kathy has indicated we purchase this kit and look at using it at Ohau). This enabled the children to have the confidence to stand up and be counted. An essential skill with Inquiry. This will fit in nicely with the Questioning focus that we are in the process of including.

Questioning

During the Learning at Schools conference, we attended a breakout session on Questioning with Trevor Bond. This session highlighted a need within our school to improve our childrens questioning abilities and skills. We have since incorporated "Questioning" as one of our Ministry goals for 2008. We are holding professional development for whole staff and presenting our approach and goals to the Board of Trustees to keep them informed of our foci. We are using Trevor Bonds questioning rubric as a basis and will measure our teaching successes within the school by generating baseline data to work with. Here is the rubric that we will be using.

Having a Go and Teacher Guided Inquiry

Term 2 this year, has brought us to a point, through our professional development and planning, that we are trialling Teacher Guided Inquiry throughout the school. We have chosen a whole school 'concept' - adaptation - and within each team, we have a different focus on this concept. We are trialling an 'Inquiry Journey Wonder Wall' to display and record our inquiry journey. Teachers are planning and developing assessments together, along with moderation at the end of this journey. We are sharing our highs and not-so-highs, with each other and supporting one-another with new learning and ideas.

De Bonos Hats

All classrooms have De Bono's structure of thinking and the coloured hats which are prompts for the different sorts of thinking on display. Junior classes are using the thinking hats model as they journey through their inquiry on adaptation of plants to their environment.

Jan-Marie Kellow

We attended the cluster workshop day, hosted by Coley Street School and were inspired and sparked into inquiry life by Jan-Marie Kellows views on Inquiry Learning. She spoke of the Theory of Inquiry and how to implement this within our classrooms. How it fitted in with the new curriculum and in particular the key competencies. She gave us some reference website to help us on our journies and inspired a fresh outlook at Inquiry.

Jan Thomas Facilitator Visit

Jan visited us on the 1st of April 2008 as part of our Professional Development. We were both released to work with her and we discussed the journey that Coley Street has taken getting to where they are now with Inquiry Learning. This reinforced what we have learnt during Learning at Schools, Hooked on Thinking, Professional Readings, and personal Professional Development and gave us practical examples and advice in implementing Inquiry Based Learning at Ohau. Term 2 we are starting our Inquiry Journey with a teacher guided inquiry focus on Adaptation.

Solo Taxonomy

During Hooked on Thinking PD, Pam and Julie introduced us to SOLO Taxonomy. This has been accepted as one of our models by all staff and can be seen as being used throughout the school. Some examples of which are:
- questioning
- comparing and contrasting
- describing
- fertile questioning

LEARNING TO INQUIRE - INQUIRE TO LEARN

Manawatu Standard Newspaper Article

The Manawatu Standard printed a News Feature article on March 25th title "Moving in Leaps and Bounds" by John McCrone. This article was very relevant on education in today's schools.

"What is the capital of Ethiopia? Which year was the Flagstaff war? What is the chemical formula for sulphuric acid? A generation ago, we might have expected educated people to carry such facts around in their heads. Now we would say forget it, just Google it!"

"The world is not merely changing, but changing at an accelerating rate. Information is growing exponentially."

This reinforces what the Ministry are accepting with the introduction of the New Curriculum.

Getting the hang of blogging

This exercise has certainly helped us understand the meaning of blogging and what is involved. We are working hard to keep up to date with new technologies and teaching and learning models and advancements with in mind to use within our school

Learning at Schools Conference

The Learning at Schools Conference was attended by Kathy, Col and Janine in Week 3 Term 1 2008. We attended a variety of break-outs, with foci on inquiry teaching and learning; interactive whiteboards and questioning. These were mostly beneficial towards supporting and developing our knowledge and skills for use both in the classroom and wider school development.
Using our experiences from past conferences and professional development, we were able to be more discerning about which break-outs would benefit our school and community the most. We have held professional development workshops for staff, using some of the knowledge and skills we aquired from the Learning at Schools Conference. We have also used those skills and knowledge in our own teaching.

Hooked on Thinking PD Visit

On February 8th 2008, Pam Hook and Julie Mills visited our school for a full day Professional Development on Inquiry Learning. All staff were involved including key relieving staff and teacher aides. Pam and Julie went through the process that they have used for Inquiry Learning in the morning. This looked at different thinking tools that can be used for Inquiry and suggested tools that can be used for different levels. They showed us some examples of Inquiry Units that they have taught and went through the achievements and obstacles associated with Inquiry. In the afternoon Pam and Julie, along with the staff went through the planning process for creating a whole school Inquiry Unit with staff breaking into groups and working on different curriculum areas. An Inquiry Model Unit was created as a reference to adapt and use at a later date.