1. Inquiry Learning.
Inquiry learning helps students to learn HOW to learn. Through Inquiry learning they come to understand and manage themselves as learners.
This powerpoint is based on a presentation by Kath Murdoch in If you ever have the change to listen to Kath do go - it will change the way you teach!

2. Inquiry Learning – Kath Murdoch
This planning model follows a sequence of activities and experiences to build on and challenge students perceptions. The sequence is inquiry based – it begins with student’s prior knowledge and experience and moves through a deliberate process that helps the knowledge to be extended, challenged and refined.
Sequence of activities
Tuning in
Finding out
Sorting out
Going further
Making connections
Taking action.
Learning is something I do – not something that is done to me

3. Why use an inquiry based approach?
It helps children take responsibility for their learning
Provides for new learning – extends on prior – helps to find new
Students evaluate their learning and each others
Detailed approach – working through the sequence of activities
Allows students to use a variety of great thinking tools
Caters for a range of learning styles – multiple intelligences
Allows for deeper understanding – students make connections
Gives students a real purpose for learning
Allows success for all – collaborative learning
Students see teacher as a learner also
Students own it! – their work their ideas.
High engagement – ownership, authenticity, relevance
Deeper independent learning skills
Vehicle for integration of the curriculum
Fosters connected learning – a sense of journey
Taps into student’s CURIOSITY

4. Inquiry Learning
Makes the process obvious to students – Learning intentions clear
Say to the children we are tuning in… we are gathering data… we are sorting out..
Talk about and display BIG UNDERSTANDINGS (related to your learning outcomes) link activities to these understandings.
Big understandings should not be answered in one session
Instead of a title for your unit why not use a question?
What is the role of technology in theatre? Year 5 and 6 prop making for a school production
How can we create a healthy garden? Big understandings: different types of gardens, different conditions needed to grow, different roles and responsibilities in the group…
How can I be the best that I can be? Commonwealth games/Gold medal -Olympic games
What, why and how do we buy? Leading up to a school market day.
How could/can we create a fitness circuit at school?
What makes things move?
New Zealand how has it changed and why?

5. Understandings recorded this is what they will learn.
How do people tell their stories?
How can we care for animals?
What makes good constructions?
Why is Asia so important to us?
Fashion – who decides and how?
How does TV influence us?
How can we keep ourselves safe?
How do living things change as they grow?
How do people overcome challenges in their lives?
The question must develop the big picture idea – ask as you work through the unit
What is it, through this inquiry will they come to understand? eg: what makes a good leader?
Understandings recorded this is what they will learn.

6. Topic considerations for inquiry learning…
Relevance
Children need to see a connection between the topic and their lives.
Developmentally appropriate, does it really matter to the students?
Potential for inquiry
Can you “frame” this topic up as an investigation? Is there a leading question that will ignite this topic?
Authenticity – Resources
Are you able to use real people, places, events in your investigation? Will students be able to gather information about this themselves?
Authenticity – Action
Will the topic allow students to do something as a result of the inquiry – what will it work towards or be driven by – could it be linked to a real project or problem?
Challenge
Will it take students beyond the known? Does the topic have the potential for developing creative, critical, ethical and reflective thinking?

7. Inquiry units can be related to: an action, an event, an issue, essential questions linked to the curriculum or an investigation of a problem.
Project oriented inquiry – driven by action
How can we create a healthy garden?
Inquiries to accompany key events in the local school, community or global setting –e.g: How can I be the best I can be (Olympics) what, why and how do we buy?
Inquiries driven by essential questions (curriculum based questions) e.g: What makes something move?
Problem oriented inquires eg: What do kids really want? (toys, new school library) What can we do to look after our river?

8. Teachers need to be clear …
Understandings – what it is we want our students to UNDERSTAND.
Do – What it is we want them to be able to DO with their learning/skills
Be – What it is we want them to BE
Understandings – transferable concept
- developmentally appropriate
- demonstrated by students
- Learned in a number of ways
- Generally agreed by all
- Are not facts or low level knowledge
- Are generated by the team
- Are refined after tuning in

9. Display understandings in the classroom
Record your understandings in “kid talk”. Put on the wall and keep referring to them as the unit unfolds.
Under your understandings you will also be able to record the skills children need to use or have used during the process of understanding. (Venn diagram, interview, PMI sort)
Three to four weeks into the unit stand by the understandings and ask students to explain each understanding – the one/two they don’t understand is the understanding you need to teach to or guide students through.
Referring to the understandings helps you and the children connect to the BIG picture all the time.

10. Tuning In Let’s find out what we already know about this topic
The purpose of tuning in
To find out what students already know, think and feel about a topic
To provide students with a focus for the forthcoming experiences
To provide students with opportunities to become engaged in the topic
To ascertain the students’ questions about and interest in the topic
To allow students to share their personal experience of the topic
To help plan further experiences and activities

11. Tuning in examples
Brainstorm
Post box - post a statement or a question about the unit
Look at the big questions – write understandings with students
Inspiration - mind mapping software
More false, more true – statements children categorise F/T
KWL chart
Mind mapping
Paired interviews - students interview each other about their understandings of topic
Think pair share – Think individually – pair with someone and share
Rocket writing - children write everything they know within a very short time frame
People Bingo - Treaty of Waitangi example
Placemat visual organiser – excellent strategy see hand out

12. Finding out Let’s find out about our topic… we could do this by …
The purpose of finding out
To further stimulate students’ curiosity
To provide new information which may answer some of the students’ earlier questions
To raise other questions for students to explore in the future
To challenge students’ prior knowledge, beliefs and values
To provide a shared experience for all students to process and reflect upon
To develop research / information skills

13. Finding out examples
Going on visits/trips
Interviewing
Experimenting
Listening to experts – Ask an expert
Asking people
Doing surveys
Looking at pictures and objects
CD Roms, internet, film, video, DVD
Letter writing / s – to ask organisations or individuals for information
Newspapers and magazines
Paintings, photographs, drawings, visual images
Picture books and novels
Phone calls

14. Sorting out Let’s sort out what we have found out so far…
The purpose of sorting out
To provide students with various means of processing and representing information and ideas arising from the finding out stage
To allow for a diverse range of outcomes
To encourage students to begin to apply and transfer some of the information they have gained to an range of tasks or contexts
To develop skills in the arts, mathematics, language and technology
To assist students to explore some of the feelings, values and attitudes associated with the topic
To create concrete records of experience and information gathered through the arts, mathematics, language and technology
To encourage students to review what they know as a group

15. Sorting out examples
Cutting up survey results
Reflective thinking
Visual organisers – KWL, PMI, Y chart
Sorting photos
Dance and drama – freeze frame, mime, puppet plays, role-play, talk shows, simulations
Media and visual arts – collage, dioramas, models, diagrams, making videos
Maths – classifying, fact finding (world’s tallest building), graphs, problem-solving, timelines
Music – chants, raps, soundscapes, compositions
English – recording in a range of text styles, Build a story, compare and contrast, data charts, oral presentations, wall stories and charts, Puzzle cards (Who/what am I?)

16. Going further Let’s find out more about something in our topic.
What do we still need to find out about?
What would we like to know even more about?
What new questions do we have?
The purpose of going further
To extend and challenge students’ understandings about the topic
To provide more information in order to broaden the range of understandings held by students
To meet the particular interests that have emerged during the unit
To revise, where necessary, some of the key understandings relevant to the topic
To develop independent research skills

17. Going further examples
Individual projects
Questions
Scaffolding, booklets with procedure
Research
Learning Contracts
Information skills and sources
Co-operative group tasks
Expert groups
Multiple Intelligence work stations

18. Making Conclusions Let’s share what we have learnt …
The purpose of Making Conclusions
To assist students to make conclusions and generalisations about the topic
To assess and demonstrate students’ progress towards the planned understandings, skills and values throughout the unit
To inform further planning
To encourage students to reflect on their learning
To foster each student’s ability to synthesise their learning and to see the ‘big picture’ ideas behind a topic
To help students explore and justify their feelings and values related to a topic
To provide a point of comparison for students between the ideas generated at the beginning of the unit and those evident now
To develop metacognitive abilities

19. Making Conclusion examples
Puppet shows
Models
Booklets
Web 2.0 tools
Making board games – excellent way for students to bring together the knowledge they have gained during the unit of work and to pass it on to others. Useful “performance” based assessment task.
Bloom’s Taxonomy
Concept maps
Crossword puzzles
De Bono’s 6 thinking hats
PMI
Time Capsules – choose 5 items to put in a container that would represent the important things we know about…the topic…what would they be?
KWL – students fill in what they have learnt.

20. Reflecting and Taking Action
Let’s think about how things went and what we could do with what we have learnt…
The purpose of reflecting and taking action
To assist students to make links between their understandings and their experience in the real world
To enable students to make choices and develop the belief that they can be effective participants in society
To provide further insight into students’ understandings for future unit planning
To reinforce the link between school, home and the wider community
To provide further opportunities and contexts for ongoing learning about the topic

21. Reflecting and taking action examples
Teaching someone else
Reflect on our learning
Advertising campaigns – students use persuasive techniques of advertising to encourage others to take action
Exhibition – students work in groups select key pieces of their learning write explanations set up the classroom like an exhibition and invite other students to come and view.
Design self-guided walks – particularly appropriate for environmental topics
Develop an action plan for the school – examples; improving access for people with disabilities, reducing bullying in the school playground, reducing packaging/glad wrap in school lunches, improving an area of the school ground.
Global links – internet allows students to make links around the world with others that are involved in action plans
Hear all about it – involves creating a news program for ‘radio’ or ‘television’
Letter writing – students register a protest against or their support of ...
Personal pledge – students consider one thing they will do in their own life as a result of what they have learned
Read all about it – students create a class newspaper devoted to the topic

22. “Classroom Connections – Strategies for Integrated Learning”
Information for this presentation came from a two day workshop presented by Kath Murdoch in 2007
MUST HAVE RESOURCES
“Classroom Connections – Strategies for Integrated Learning”
Kath Murdoch
ISBN: 1 –
“Learning for Themselves” Jeni Wilson and Kath Murdoch
ISBN: