Inquiry as a way of life- ongoing, consistent, daily inquiry to build questioning. How often do kids ask questions? Does every child in the class ask questions daily? Studies found that by G5, some students can go days without asking a single question.
Think about daily Wonder Time- using a wonder wall or National Geographic picture of the day to just promote questioning, but this needs time to follow up on, or it's self-defeating! Model this during class meetings, show how curious you are as a teacher then follow up the following day to model how you looked into it, how you answered it and your follow-up questions.
Think of inquiry as a sequence, not simply a single question from day one.
Answering a question vs addressing a question -> language helps to think about best way to further questioning. One question leads to a following question that's related to the first etc.
The more we learn, the more we WONDER. Not the more we learn, the more we know. How do we
make sure that we don't encourage answers instead of questions?
Should we be phrasing it as 'experts' vs specialists?
Areas of speciality- all kids in the class can talk about things they specialize in. Before exhibition begins? That would be powerful as a resource during the exhibition. Expertise implies that the learning is finished.
Facts/questions/responses
Get away from the "main idea" when reading- key ideas and connected thinking
Especially challenging given the program. Not nearly enough time to read, write, think, reflect, inquire!!
How can we balance that out? Value to a rich program, but where is the extended learning time.
Google 20% time
Could we integrate that into passion projects? What push back would we get? Assuming we built in language, maths etc?
3M 15% Solution
Time to dream, to think, to wonder, to work on projects of interest
Creativity needs freedom
14256 hours between kindergarten and gr 12!!!!!
Build it into small group inquiry with common interests during final unit of inquiry- allow an hour 3x a week during instrument time? What would it replace- writers' workshop?
Tuning In After an evening inquiring into the city of Berlin we find ourselves back at the Berlin Brandenburg International School and Kath Murdoch starts the day by asking us: How are you feeling this morning? It seems like a simple question! We share on the trusty post it notes and ask a few questions in our groups.
Then she asks these questions to help us go deeper...
Is this feeling a driver or a blocker to your learning?
What can you do to stop the blocking feelings from blocking?
What can you or other people do to help you change or capitalise on your feelings?
This 'Be more dog' video can be used as a provocation to think about changing behaviour, feelings or thinking. What can you do to be more dog?
The thread from yesterday about knowing yourself and your students and your students knowing themselves as learners and being in touch with how they are feeling continued. The four rooms of change was suggested as another way of thinking about how you are feeling and how this will impact on your learning (simplified from this theory) Which room are you in? Use the four rooms to inquire into yourself and how you are feeling.
Journeys of Inquiry
The next part of the day focussed on the path you take as you inquire. 'Inquiry teachers are highly intentional. The more you know where you are headed the better positioned you are to take the unexpected route to get there.' Kath Murdoch, Berlin, February 2017
We thought about how the PYP offers us a framework for inquiry and considered the familiar question of what do we want our students to understand, be and do?
Kath talked about the importance of keeping an eye on the curriculum. She challenged us to ask ourselves: Have we set this up so that we hit these outcomes? Do we know what the concepts are that we are working towards? How will we know when students understand them? Are the concepts that we have attached to our units worth knowing about?
As a group we discussed: Are there any units in our school that we feel have concepts/big understanding in them that are not worth knowing about? The grade 2 and the grade 5 teachers present discussed their current units and identified the concepts of change, identity, family, connection and perspective as being important and valuable ideas to think about.
'Questions are at the heart of an inquiry.' Kath Murdoch, Berlin, February 2017
Q Chart to support with forming questions from http://oneandwonder.blogspot.de
Still on the topic of questioning we tried out the 5 Whys protocol. We started with the question 'Why is teacher questioning so important?' and our partners had to ask us four more Why questions which connected to the answers. This protocol helped us to focus on listening, connecting and going deeper.
Common questioning traps:
Guess what's in my head
Closed questions with
Questioning to large group and responding only to individuals hands up (no think, pair, share)
Lack of probing-not going deeper (question-response-probe but just question-response, question-response)
Not leaving wait time or silence
Let's try not to do these! Be conscious of your questioning behaviour. As your students for feedback on your questioning.
What are we already doing?
It was reaffirming for us that much of what Kath Murdoch shared as good practice, relating to inquiry, were things that are already well imbedded and part of the everyday learning and teaching in our school. The use of visible thinking routines to 'get inside the students heads' and to see what they are thinking, supporting students to ask relevant and effective questions and research in a variety of ways, teachers asking meaningful questions to try to go deeper, using the inquiry cycle as a framework and observing and listening to children's interests to help us to go further are all things that we felt familiar with and understood the importance of.
Reflections from the ISZL group...What are your take aways?
'This weekend has reaffirmed that what I am doing in the classroom and what we are doing as a school is on the right path'
'This workshop has made me think about the idea of Release. This will be my focus going back to the classroom on Monday.'
'The quote 'Please don't do it for me, teach me how to do it myself' was one that resonated with me.'
'Time. Having the time to connect with what Kath was talking about to our own classroom practice and generate ideas that we can try out in the classroom was really valuable.' Final Thought About Inquiry What does this say about inquiry? A good one to show to teachers, parents and students to get them thinking about learning.
'To be better educators we must be better learners' Kath Murdoch, BBIS, Berlin, February 4th 2017 Some resources shared during the workshop Tuning In It's a foggy Saturday morning in a high school gym near Berlin and Kath Murdoch is encouraging us to think about inquiry. To start she doesn't put up a central idea or focus on research skills, instead she begins with us as learners. The first question: What can you do or be that will help you get the most out of this learning opportunity? The answers come thick and fast and then she asks us to develop a question that we wanted to keep in mind for the two day workshop. She encourages us to think about whether we offer our students these kind of opportunities to set themselves learning goals or intentions.
Wonder wall of participants questions
Moving on, we think about the difference between a learnER centred classroom and a learnING centred classroom. How do our walls and what we hear as we walk around our classrooms show that they are centred on learning?
Inquiry
After discussing inquiry through a few more visible thinking routines we are asked to take a pipe cleaner and make a representation of the concept of inquiry. We follow up by finding one or two others in the room and making connections between our representations. As the full groups shares back we hear these thoughts: Inquiry is messy but there is a path, there are ups and downs in inquiry, it is confusing. Inquiry is expected but unexpected, it is planned but spontaneous. Inquiry is making connections, going in different directions and freedom.
Some of our representations of the concept of inquiry
We continue to talk about ourselves as learners and inquiry. Kath comments that "Teachers are inquiring into our students and their learning." She encourages us to ask "What are they revealing to me? What do we need to do next?"
Checking In Continuing to think about ourselves as inquirers we talk about our students, how well we know them and how well they know themselves. We talk about self assessment, setting goals and intentions and being able to check in on our learning.
One idea for getting students to set goals or intentions or 'check in' on themselves
Who Am I as an Inquiry Teacher? Other highlights of the first day included a speed teaching (modified jigsaw activity) where we looked at 9 practices that power up inquiry learning and thought about or strengths and weaknesses as inquiry teachers. This might be something to try as a quick starter in a team meeting or a staff meeting. Many people talked about their need to release more and the importance of good questioning to support inquiry.
Kath Murdoch 2016
Final Thoughts For me one of the big take aways for day one was... 'Know your curriculum to let go of your curriculum' This idea resonated with me as I feel like as a well established school with an ever growing culture of inquiry, enthusiastic students and knowledgeable, experienced, open minded teachers we are in a great position to take risks and really push ourselves to further. Over the next few weeks and months I'd like to look at the teaching and learning in our school and think about the following Core Principles Guiding the Inquiry Teacher's Practice, which Murdoch outlines in her new book, The Power of Inquiry. Looking through the lenses of: Ownership Interest Reflection Purpose Prior Learning Transfer Collaboration Resilience Time Feedback Environment Openness Joy will hopefully help us to focus, think and question further.
One More Thing Another good video to help us think... (focussed on science but could easily be substituted with the word inquiry)
