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.