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.