Facilitator Meeting

Tried to bribe Jan with my birthday morning tea, so I wouldn't have to heaps of work - but alas - my cunning plan failed - hahaha - thanks for all the help Jan (really mean that)

Looked at model, new format is too complicated. After review of the last one, teachers wanted more information about each aspect, so tried to put it on the model. This made it very scary looking and didn’t really help the cause. So have decided to simplify the model and put the required details into the support booklet. The staff have all the bits and pieces they need for the inquiry journey but it is scattered, I need to compile a booklet of support so that all scaffolding for the staff and their students is in one easily accessible place.

Discussed the importance of the focus question – something that this term we skipped over (put that one down to experience) – we had our theme and our direction but skimmed of the questioning part too quickly – this need to be more detailed and thorough as it sets up our inquiry – it is the key to our inquiry – kind of got a bit lost on the journey – trying to move too quickly I think and forgot about the key ideas of inquiry. We are using this unit as an inquiry process, I got a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing and lost the big idea. We will still reflect on what is working well, looking at each stage of our inquiry and together as a staff problem solve any issue and keep reworking on our ideas and refining our inquiry process.

We are looking at key competencies and how we can use these in assessment. We have completed some ground work on assessment and key competencies – we are now looking at moving to our next step and designing rubrics for these. This unit our key competency focus is managing self and participating and contributing – we are going to have a staff meeting (or two) on what these mean and look like to us as a staff. Once our rubric is designed, we are going to include in the organise stage – the children designing their own rubric for the specific competency – this means the children can assess themselves at the beginning and also know the steps they need to take to make improvements – which in turn will be very powerful. We will keep you up to date with the progress. Once we have completed the first couple of rubrics, then we can link them to other areas of the inquiry processing – information processing skills, communication skills etc – or we may just decide to use the key competencies – further research and development is needed here. Also it needs to be a process completed together as a staff and not just one staff member – this will also encourage ownership of the whole thing too.
We are thinking about including our production as our inquiry next term – could be a challenge, could be a disaster, we will keep you informed