Kath Murdoch - Building Learning Capacity in the Inquiry Classroom

Yesterday I attended a very inspiring, practical and relevant PD day hosted by Kath Murdoch. Here are my key 'takeaways' which you might find useful.

Inquiry as a disposition - how we teach - what do I say, how do I organise... Teaching is what makes the real difference. It is a great approach to teach children how to learn - the pedagogy behind learning to learn and strengthening kids ability to inquire, growing inquiry in kids. We need to focus on building 'learning muscle'

How can we do this?

• Sharing leaning intentions (no secrets!)
• Create these with kids
• Framing LI as a question (not WALT) here is what we're exploring, I wonder what we'll find out about...
  • How can we ensure we listen effectively, 
  • How can we ensure we discuss our ideas and opinions with others (P4C link here)

• Don't do it for me, teach me how to do it for myself

When doing our Clearview Learner inquiry at the start of each term, think about grounding it in these questions

• What can you DO and BE to help yourself learn well?
• What might get in the way of your learning? What should you to avoid / not do
• What would you like to Strengthen / stretch / get better at (switching on to learning cards)
• What are you trying to get better at as a learner?
• How are you going, what do you know, how do you know, what are your next steps? (If kids can't answer, 'would you like me to tell you what I see?')

• What switches learning on, what turns it off?
• What do you know about yourself as a learner? How can you be a better one? How can you find out? (Kids ask peers, parents, other teachers, research SMS investigating). Transfer learning and show in a different way such as the arts, having own choice artifacts produced to represent themselves as learners- share at Clearview open night, providing a great, natural opportunity to encourage children sharing what they know about themselves as a learner with their parents
• What is the process we do to learn new things - kids choosing something they couldn't do but would love to be able to. Individualised, but based on how to learn. How can you transfer those skills to other areas of learning?

When successful people fail, they reflect 'what could I do differently?' 'What did I do that didn't work?' instead of focusing on 'they (others) and what they did

Do kids know themselves as learning?

Can the kids speak 'learnish'?

Can they set goals?

Do they see you as a learner?

Do you model the learning process?

Are you embedding the language of learning?

It's not enough for us to know they're doing it, they have to know they're doing it

Strategies and how they build learning capacity

• Tuning in (to the children and ourselves, not tuning in to the topic) (getting baseline data to show progress)
  • What colour is learning?
  • What symbol represents your idea of inquiry?
  • What image represents your idea of inquiry?
• Same example with the word 'change' - what ideas do different children. Ring about the same word. Then when you move into actual inquiry: how the land changes, chn already have an idea about positive and negative change. 
• Start with the known, then make it more conceptual and topic based

When sharing during a think pair share or a buddy sharing time have a question to focus the conversation, what connections and similarities between you and a buddy? What differences can you see? What does that make you wonder?

As a teacher, record the key ideas about first ideas with a space for second ideas (over a period of time, maybe a week or two)

"Wonder is the beginning of Wisdom" Socrates

Value is being able to discuss, explore, develop own learning, challenging each other, forming own truths. Safe discussion around ideas, encouraging them to question, learn and unlearn. Developing clarity when you say it out loud. Even when sharing thinking, some kids are finding out!

Stimulating curiosity and generating questions

Get out of their way: see what kids can learn without you!

How inquiry based is this lesson? Think about lesson by lesson rather than whole inquiry unit

We need to tach our kids how to analyse and make sense of information, not how to access it.

Split screen left- content, right - process (transferable, what can we take to other lessons? Contexts? Learning)

Eg left - what makes something a living thing?

Right- how can we effectively EXPLAIN our thinking to others?

Remember to come back to these concepts, have reflective pauses mud way through teaching lesson / sequence

Keep feedback on concepts, nor task eg what did you do to help that happen. Focus on skills, not the product.

Data chart for children and teacher to fill in as they going

• What are your questions?
• What are you noticing?
• What skills are you using?
• What is working well?
• What creative skills are you using?
• How do you feel about what you are doing?

Shared by Angela