Coley Street - inquiry journey

Firstly, thank you to the team at Coley Street for opening their doors to use and sharing their journey, it was a valuable and impressive day. :-)

Time
Giving ourselves time to change and develop was one of the key ideas for me, this also backed up my own thoughts. Change does not happen over night, especially not quality change, we have to allow time for thought and mistakes, reflection and further modifications. The idea that we can try something new and not fully succeed instantly is a sigh of relief for many of us out there. We always want what is best for the children, and when things don't go according to plan, it can be frustrating. But with positive change there is always going to be the battles, the resistance and those challenges, we need to be constantly thinking of the outcome, knowing that we will get there eventually, but it is a journey to be taken.
Consistency of language
It was fantastic to see the consistency throughout the school, the model, the rubric, the language. This is one thing that we are trying hard to do at our school, I think it has a massive impact ont he students. If we expose them to the language of inquiry and thinking form a very young age, it will become second nature, as was seen at Coley Street. Junior we using the language of thinking, students knew how to use the tools, great scaffolding for learning!
All staff on board
The expectation that all staff were to be 'on board' with inquiry was huge. Of course you will get the resistance from some, but it has to be easier when the expectation is there, the staff know what is required and the support is there to back them up. This would have a positive impact on consistency,, collegual duscussion and support etc. I do feel the our school is much better at this than before. It was like Ross said 'the movement from classroom as islands', I do believe that this journey has to be a team trip.

Other thoughts from the day
* Language throughout the school, consistency, exposure to language at a young age, not using ‘juniors’ as an excuse for modification
* HoM repeatedly mention throughout conferences and course
* Quality learning environments impact on learning, can’t really succeed with a ‘make do’ mentality
* Budgets change due to the way we access information, lessens that need to buy resource packs
* Teachers must buy into it, have to own it otherwise it wont work
* Different levels of inquiry – some staff still have the idea that inquiry means 50 topics happening in one class
* Not to rush, not to be afraid to experiment, to be innovative, have the expectation that there will be support for those that want to ‘fly’ but also willing to share
* Children motivate themselves with the ownership of the topic – if they don’t have an emotional hook into the inquiry, it will fall apart, the power of inquiry is the power of the learner
* Children could articulate the process, the tools they were using, their next step, how they have to analyse the information, rate it, use different learning strategies

College Street Normal - thinking skills
Firstly, WOW - what an amazingly dynamic leader Ross is, it was inspiring to see him bounce round with excitement about their journey and staff. A huge wealth of knowledge and I would be really interested in visiting his school to further explore habit of the mind.
This session was we useful to show practical applications for thinking skills and tools.
We have alread set to trial our think scope and this reaffirmed the need for scaffolding for our learners and well as not overwhelming them with a multitude of tools. As part of our inquiry, we a trialling a selection of strategies and tools in the hope to refine them into a schoolwide tool box. Teachers are not onlky trialling them in inquiry but also throughtout other learning areas, which inturn reinforces the strategy and using the tools in meaninful context.