Staff Meeting - whats going well

We had a catch-up for inquiry this week. We talked about how things were going with inquiry and where to next……..

What is going well with immersion – what difference have we seen since the last inquiry?
· Hands on experiences
· Exposure to a variety of concepts/ideas
· It is important to be specific enough to ‘guide’ – point the inquiry in the right direction
· One teacher says -“Really have to be specific in the immersion to make that meaningful link with children – if they don’t make connections at this stage – the inquiry is lost – if there no natural curiosity – where does the inquiring mind come from? Will place more emphasis on this stage in the next inquiry.”
· Children make more contributions to this stage (compared to last inquiry), they have made their own connections to the real world – meaningful concepts really help drive the inquiry – something that children can really get involved with.
· This stage really motivated the children – they are eager to go further
· Immersion is a crucial aspect to set up the inquiry
· Lots of resources – equipment – materials for the children to work with creates authenticity and ownership.
· Immersion is easier to manage as whole class activities – sets up working relationships for co-operative learning and developing communication skills, have a great class buzz when all are eager to investigate.
· Questioning is coming through at this stage – seen a huge difference from last inquiry as children weren’t really engaged. It is a lot easier and more fun to grow veges from seed to spark interest rather than watching a video or some such thing –(which is where we came from) – This highlighted the importance of the delivery a focus of the inquiry – really have to think about the concept rather than the topic.

We then discussed - what do we do with these questions or the wonderings?
A huge discussion was had about the importance of these questions or wonderings. Discussed how these questions should/could drive the inquiry – these are the questions that will capture our students, will be their motivation, their ownership of the whole inquiry.
We set another inquiry meeting to further discuss the continued refining of our thinking about questioning in preparation for term four.
This also brought us to the realisation that we didn’t have an over-riding question ourselves – this is because we tackled this inquiry from the back end.
We had these vege boxes etc, we wanted to promote healthy eating, so we did ‘edible gardens’ – we have forced this inquiry down the road we wanted it.
We have kind of ‘done’ inquiry and kind of haven’t – we know where we went astray, have reflected on this and have discussed further refinements for next term – it has allowed us a great chance to take ownership of the whole inquiry buzz – together – to continue refining and strengthening our understanding of what we need to develop to ensure we make inquiry work in our school. We are so on the right track – just had a slight detour but what a great journey we now have.


What is going well with DISCOVER?
· Hands on
· Visual aspect
· Increase of vocab and language
· Sharing of skills
· Experimenting of hands on curiosities
· More involvement through learning
· There is an expectation and requirement of self management
· Not on the computer researching
· Children are investigating
· Children are debating their findings
· Learning continuing beyond classroom and time constraints
· Learning tools (thinking maps) are being used more effectively and confidently
· Groups are focussed by questions
· Makes it easier for the juniors to do as a class
· Increased communication skills
Confidence to express opinions
Meaningful involvement promotes listening skills
Children have the confidence to challenge ideas

What isn’t going so well or what are our troubles?
· There is a danger of it dragging out a bit due to having student teachers with their own requirements, the weather, time and interruptions. We need to think about the length of time we are spending on each stage – we have spent quite a while on immersion – this is the danger as it could lean us towards integration rather than inquiry – something we have to watch.
· One teacher was wondering how they can monitor the whole class input – how do I make sure that everyone is contributing?
· At times lack of materials eg wood etc can hinder our path – just means that the teacher has to be more organised and the children can make the sourcing of these materials part of their inquiry.

Where to next?
We discussed the importance of scaffolding.
For this inquiry (what’s left of it) we will focus on our scaffolding – what we need as facilitators and what the children need to successfully complete the inquiry process.
· What we need – we will come together to discuss questioning in immersion and scaffolding.

We are coming together in two weeks to set our rubrics for inquiry.
This is a new task for us as rubrics are currently not used – we set learning intentions and success criteria but not in rubric form.

The staff are going to create a rubric for managing self and participating & contributing, We need to solidify our own understanding before we take it to the children. We discussed the importance of knowing skills involved and what the learners needs to do before reaching the next level – providing the learner with goals and next learning steps.

Two meetings on inquiry before the end of the term.
PHEW!!!!!!!!