Inquiry Learning - Jan-Marie Kellow

INQUIRY LEARNING is asking questions about authentic contexts…student-centred learning about contexts that are relevant to them…the process of finding out stuff…developing skills to assist in investigating authentic issues, to gain a deeper understanding of the ‘real world’ and the society that we live in.
For me, the most powerful idea that will have lasting impact on our inquiry model, is the real world context. This will completely change curriculum development and in turn our delivery. We have to think hard about the topics selected, so they can actually provide real context rather than being restricted to research topic (traditional thinking). We will need to educate our community aswell as ourselves, as we have heard many times this year, often our communities have nostalgic views of education. I do also think that for our staff, getting outside the boundaries of our own school will open pathways to deeper thinking, we need to get out and see inquiry in action, so we can change our thinking.
DISCUSSION POINT – Are ‘Inquiry based learning’ and ‘Information literacy’ the same thing?
Information literacy is really just the tools…just a part of…they go together…you cannot do inquiry learning without the tools and skills…many confuse information literacy as inquiry learning…consider the HOTS as inquiry…RICH Q?s as inquiry…low-level questioning does not fit as well, except that it may be considered ‘low level’ inquiry…
This is my worry for our inquiry topic, the rich question is not so rich - but I guess we have to start somewhere - hopefully connections with this can be seen through further discussions at the reflection stage
LOOK LIKE? *School-wide Pictorial Model displayed, rubric displayed for students referral, other models as prompts, Key question clearly displayed, displayed progress (not always beautiful), levels of organisation = organised chaos, related resources (ICT and other), creative tangents, , groups doing different things, focused activity
For me this is about consistency throughout the school - we need to saturate the children with 'inquiry language', we have developed a visual aide, which is now visible in all classrooms. Teachers are more aware of using the language of thinking and inquiry to support the childrens journey. I think it is important to hav this consistency, so children moving throughout the school can see our mission, our goals, our learning intentions etc. This will have to be a major focus as we move along our journey, something that will be continually refined. we have started to look at our assessments, however, one step at a time huh, we are still developing mode for these.