OPS+Teacher's+Reflection+on+Inquiry

=Teaching as Inquiry Team 2- Year 2 =

Out of 5 team members one teacher is very confident using the Inquiry Learning. She has used Inquiry Learning in a previous school and as part of her teaching since being at Owairoa.

In Term 2 we used the Inquiry model for our Kiwiana study with varying degrees of success and confidence. We were all able to brainstorm and decide what we wanted to find out. Although we found the answers together as a class the path was not always clear. This is an area where further support is needed. (We know the what but not always the how) However, the children were enthused and all teachers enjoyed this topic expressing the opinion they would like to study it again.

Discussion of ‘where we are at’ using Inquiry learning led us to several points of discussion

 * Approximately what time allocation do we allow for Inquiry learning
 * Basic thinking skills need to be taught and practised
 * Teachers and children need to be familiar with the language
 * Topic choice is important and needs to be related to school wide activities if possible allowing the topic more opportunity to be integrated across the curriculum and more easily managed in the classroom
 * Teachers need to change their thinking and cover one aspect of a topic in depth rather a little of many aspects
 * Limited ICT equipment in rooms hinders the children’s ability to share information with others
 * Inability to read can limit the ability to retrieve information
 * We have a better understanding that time needs to be spent helping the children accumulate knowledge before we pose our Inquiry question
 * The process needs flexibility to interchange the stages or backtrack
 * An Inquiry model needs to incorporate higher order thinking (Blooms Taxonomy) and Key Competencies
 * We would still like to see some models of Inquiry Learning with a more in depth explanation of how the Inquiry was managed in the classroom

From discussion as a team we have grasped a better understanding of the Inquiry Learning Model we used and now feel more confident about planning together as a team for next term.

Attached is the model we used. (where is the model?)

=<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Year 3 Inquiry Learning Summary =

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Tuesday 24 August 2010
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We had a lot of discussion about the amount of input from the teacher. We feel that at Year 3 the children are still too young to be in charge and that their input is co-constructed with the teacher. We felt that it was our job as teachers to ensure that the students learnt the skills and processes needed to be able to take part in inquiry learning, i.e. information gathering, choosing resources, thinking about the big ideas, questioning techniques etc.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">__**Our model**__ – this is written in Teacher speak and the heading terms would have to be revised into words that mean the same but are more easily understood and remembered by Year 3 children. We also think that we would need a graphic representation of this so that the whole process is more easily visualised by the students.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Immersion** – need to establish what the topic is, needs to be wider rather than narrow - e.g. “Animals in the Garden” rather than “Hedgehogs”, or “The Bush” rather than Native Trees”

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Reflection** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">review prior and recent knowledge and learning

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Formulate Big Question** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">at Year 3 this question will need to be modelled, it needs open-ended, revisable/reviewable. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Questioning skills will have to be taught. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We will need to decide why we need to have these ideas, what we are going to produce, synthesise, who and what it is for, what changes can be made as a result of these findings. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Review/reflect on what has been done/how well have we done it/did we find what we need?

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Information Retrieval** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">students need to learn what resources are and where to find them. They will need to learn how to use the internet- Google- effectively, the library, visits by experts. They will also need to learn to take notes, put information into a collection, i.e. copy and paste. They will need to learn about copyright and plagiarism. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">They will also need to learn how to use graphic organisers. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Review/reflect on what has been done/how well have we done it/did we find what we need?

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Sorting and Sifting** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">discard what’s no use or irrelevant Collate, organise – skills will be need to be learnt here <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Review/reflection what we have done, and what we have learnt so far – do we need to start again

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Synthesis** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">construct the outcome, implement the findings etc

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Sharing** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">sharing and showing what we have done – celebration of the learning that has taken place.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Review** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">evaluate/reflect – does your work from No. 6 answer the question posed at the beginning/has our learning fixed the problem/made an appropriate change.

=Team 3 Investigate Inquiry=

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Monday 23 August 2010
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1. Discussion of P34-36 of NZC – general feeling was that this section relates strongly to what we are doing in AToL rather than the tradition idea of inquiry learning.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2. Some of us like the Red Beach Model of Get it, Sort it, Use it, although there was some feeling that this was a slogan that could lead to over simplification.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">3. Some dissatisfaction expressed about the Trevor Bond session from the last term. People had difficulty hearing him, that his questioning and slide show were poor and that his resources w ere old and probably needed up dating. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">He had good ideas about introducing things from Y0/1 building from this level with lots of modelling to Y7/8 where the children could run their own inquiry learning.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">4. We looked at some of the models from the [|www.ictnz.com/infolitmodels.htm] website. Some of the links did not work which made it difficult to look at all the examples.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The first model we looked at was the Alberta Model – we felt there were good guidelines for the Teacher to work from and there was a good table that explained the process well.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">5. Jamie McKenzie – website was difficult to follow but similar process to the Alberta, different jargon used.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">6. Super 3 – we felt this was a good model for the junior school. It is AToL related and the structure and the process are simple and easy to follow

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Beginning – what am I supposed to do? <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Middle – do the activities <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">End – reflect on what we did and what we learnt

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">7. Noodletools.com – we liked this model – Engaging, Defining, Initiating, Locating, Examining, Recording, Communicating, Evaluating – although these terms would have to be changed to suit the Year 3 level. We thought this model was clear and it had an easy website to follow. We felt it would be especially good further up the school as it had links to resources.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">JEM 25 August 2010