When planning is an inquiry…

We used to plan all the learning experiences in advance. If the entire unit is planned out in detail, where are the opportunities for learners to drive the inquiry? How do they take ownership of their learning and lead it in new directions?

We do, at my school, plan the big picture, of course. We build on where the learners have come from and ensure clarity on the conceptual direction. We know what we hope the learners will come to understand and the skills and dispositions required to support the learning. But plans are flexible and responsive to what the learners reveal. The individuality of the journey, the specific teachable moments, and the ways the learning might impact or transform each learner, depend on how the inquiry unfolds.

As we shift to an increasingly emergent model, the learning is becoming more meaningful. The more we take an inquiry stance, seeking to notice what our learners are curious about and how best they learn, the more competently we can support them in moving forward. The more thoughtfully we reflect on what is revealed, the more effectively we can respond.

When questioned recently about our strategic plan, I realised that this is also how we, as leaders at my school, plan. We know where we have come from and we can identify goals for moving ahead. And then what? We value the power of ‘what if’ and ‘how might we’ questions to provoke thinking, encourage dreaming and support our inquiry stance.

Here too, it seems our model is more emergent. The more attentively we observe and notice ourselves and others, the more we are able to explore possibilities. The more thoughtfully we reflect on the nuances of complex issues, openly examine tensions and actively disrupt the status quo, the more ready we are to experiment with innovative solutions. 

Creating a carefully laid out action plan in advance, with specific strategies and tasks, is not, it seems, our optimum style.

An inquiry into remote learning…

In Australia we have now begun planning for continuous remote learning, given the inevitability of school closure to limit the spread of COVID-19. I’m reminded of my very first blog post, more than ten years ago!

It is important to start by recognising how incredibly fortunate we are.

How many children around the world experience interruption to schooling due to disease, natural disaster or war? How many have access to an education at all? Of those that do, how many are lucky enough to have ready access to the resources that we do? Do we understand that in remote communities, this might be the way learning always looks? Do we appreciate the technology, books, materials, time, space and people to whom/which we have access? Do we acknowledge the collective wisdom and generosity of other teachers and schools with more experience than we have, readily sharing their ideas and expertise with us? We have so much to be grateful for.

The initial response of our teachers, ranging from excitement to panic, depends on individual perspective, personal circumstance, prior experience, technological ability and comfort level with the unknown. So our stance, at my school, will be to see this as an opportunity rather than a challenge. We will approach it, as always, as an inquiry, an extension of our 2020 focus on building cohesion. We will expand our whole school inquiry into building community and a sense of belonging into the new and unfamiliar territory in which we find ourselves.

So these are some of our initial inquiry questions:

• How might we continue to build cohesion when we are learning from home?
• How might we create a sense of community despite being physically apart?
• How might we ensure that everyone feels safe, comfortable and supported?
• How might we seamlessly (almost) continue the children’s learning, and our own?
• How might we remotely plan for and provide opportunities for rich learning experiences?
• How might we ensure the wellbeing of our whole learning community, students, educators and parents?
• How will every member of our learning community contribute to all the above?
• And… how might we extend the learning into other communities?

 

 

An ongoing, interwoven, emerging inquiry for teachers and students…

What?

What if, during every unit of inquiry, learners had opportunities to develop their thinking and understanding by expressing themselves in ‘100 languages’?

What if we made that into an explicit ongoing unit of inquiry, for teachers as much as learners, interwoven through all the other units?

What if every unit had these two additional lines of inquiry?

• How we might express our learning through ‘100 languages’.
• How expressing ourselves in different ways deepens our understanding.

What if learners asked themselves…

What theories and ideas do I have?

What might I make to show my understanding?

How might I communicate my ideas?

How is my thinking changing?

Which questions and ideas would I like to explore further?

How might I learn from my failures?

What if teacher research questions included…

How might the ‘100 languages’ inspire curiosity and inquiry?

How might we select intelligent materials that help develop ideas?

How will we observe and listen to what is revealed by the children?

How might we make the ideas and wonderings visible?

How might we decide which student examples will drive the inquiry?

How will we encourage and honour children’s theories?

How will we  ensure there is time for conversation that helps move the inquiry along?

so what?

Might this support us in slowing down to make time and space for deeper learning?

Might this encourage planning and teaching that responds to emerging inquiries?

Might this foster learner agency and enhance opportunities for learners to drive the learning?

Might this create opportunities for every learner to shine?

Might this support our current focus on cultivating action, both in students and teachers?

Might this be an expression of every single one of our learning principles?

• We learn in different ways, depending on abilities, preferences and interests.
• Learning takes place through inquiry: questioning, exploring, experimenting and problem solving.
• Learning occurs by acquiring skills and knowledge, constructing meaning and transfer to other contexts.
• Learning is active and social and can be enhanced by collaboration and interaction.
• Learning takes place when we feel secure, valued and are able to take risks.
• Learning needs to be challenging, meaningful, purposeful and engaging.
• Learning includes metacognition and reflection, and requires learners to take ownership of their learning.

Now what?

Let’s see how it goes!

When do inquiry teachers let go?

A request arrived this week for permission to use a cartoon I’d created years ago, showing the gradual release of responsibility of model.

As an inquiry teacher, who values learner agency, do you always teach or model first, only letting go when you think they are ready?

Or are students free to have a go, explore, experiment, test theories, formulate ideas… while you observe the learning, allowing your observations to inform when and whom to teach or support and when to step aside?

Do you trust the learners and the learning process?

Update 2019

Thinking beyond ourselves – a whole school inquiry…

‘Thinking beyond ourselves empowers us to act.‘ This powerful central idea for our PYP exhibition has fostered awareness of self and others, revealed vulnerabilities and spawned a variety of meaningful student initiated action. But it’s almost the end of our school year and some of them are only just getting going…

What if we combined several of the ideas in the previous post and developed a whole school, year long inquiry, transcending the boundaries of trans disciplinary themes, explored by both teachers and students?

We start each teaching team’s planning session by revisiting our beliefs about action, considering examples of action and placing them on the iceberg.  (Try it and see the ideas that emerge). Next we reflect indivdiually and share examples of ways we contribute beyond ourselves. We break this down into contributions within the school community, the broader community and then globally. (Another provocation worth trying!)

We brainstorm possible, age appropriate ways that children might be encouraged to think beyond themselves, enabling us to create some initial, potential lines of inquiry. It’s interesting to see the beliefs and values that teachers bring to the planning… and it will be fascinating to see the student initiated inquiries and actions.  Exploring this big idea through different conceptual lenses will add further layers.

So far, in the Who We Are theme, Year 1 students will inquire into who we are as individuals within our learning community; how we build an effective learning community;  how kindness impacts our community; why and how we create an essential agreement.  

Also in Who We Are, Year 4 will inquire into how individuals contribute to our community; how we build connections within our community; and how knowledge of others influences our actions. Revisiting the big idea in Sharing the Planet, they will investigate the impact of our actions on a sustainable future.

Year 6 will explore forces that shape culture;  how our actions influence culture; the impact of thinking beyond ourselves; and how thinking beyond ourselves transforms us. This will be a year long unit spanning Who We Are and Sharing the Planet.  Inspired by the sustainable development goals, students will have opportunities to design their own lines of inquiry, depending on interests and needs, within or accross any of the concentric circles. 

I’m looking forward to planning with the other teams.  Year 3s might be inspired to explore diversity accross Who we Are and Where we are in Place and Time.  Year 5s are keen to explore values and it will be interesting to see where that might lead, across more than one theme. Thinking beyond ourselves takes on a different dimension when explored in the context of Phys Ed and team games. Our whole school focus on developing the whole child is firmly embedded, and the potential of this unit to further enhance that is exciting.

Once the Program of Inquiry is viewed flexibily, its potential expands exponentially…

Liberating the program of inquiry…

What if we develop a new whole school unit of inquiry, linked to our whole school focus?

What if teachers and learners focus on the same inquiry?

What if we critically evaluate all our units against a list of criteria generated by both teachers and learners?

What if units do not follow one after another, but rather overlap and intersect?

What if some units are year long, some short, some ongoing… depending on content, concepts, trans disciplinary possibilities and student interest?

What if we actively seek unexpected combinations of learning areas, like science and poetry?

What if one unit incorporates two trans disciplinary themes?

What if we wait to develop the lines of inquiry till we see where the learners want to take it?

What if we we have the same central idea for all the classes at one grade level, but each group of learners develop their own lines of inquiry?

What if we analyse our program of inquiry in terms of the concentric circle model and check the balance between opportunities for self discovery and thinking beyond ourselves?

What if all units focus not just on developing knowledge and understanding, but on developing human beings?

What if every grade level has at least one unit that is individual and personal, student selected and student driven?

What if we liberate ourselves from the traditional curriculum prison and explore new vistas? 

These are some of the questions we are considering as we head into the annual review of our Program of Inquiry . We have already experimented with some of these ideas.  How might we shift thinking and learning even further, for both teachers and students? What else might we explore? 

I used to think the POI review was about checking for curricular alignment and conceptual development… Now I think it’s about asking even ‘more beautiful questions’.

Planning (but not too much) for inquiry…

 

There were so many things to be excited about during the planning of this unit with our Year 1 team:

• the honest reflection of the teachers who engaged in this inquiry last year and their willingness to view it through fresh eyes;
• the openness of the teachers for whom the unit is new and the ideas they bring to the learning process;
• how far we have come from the days when we thought we had to plan the whole inquiry in advance;
• our split screen approach to planning, in which we simultaneously consider the unit and the format of the new planner we are designing;
• the opportunities for the development of the whole child, both as a curious scientist and as a human being who cares about animals;
• the authentic learning that will arise from having caterpillars, chickens and rabbits in the learning space;
• the teachers’ own inquiry into how best to provoke, support and encourage the children’s inquiry;
• the agency learners will have as they help care for the animals, share their wonderings to lead the inquiry, develop their own theories, find the best ways to document their observations and choose how they might like to present their learning…

and now, the wonderful possibilities arising from the children’s initial wonderings:

• I wonder if they eat their poo.
• I wonder what patterns they will have on their wings.
• I wonder what they do when no-one is there…

Curriculum shouldn’t be linear…

Learning isn’t linear. Consider your own learning… How do a range of separate experiences contribute to the development of your understanding? How does that understanding deepen, the more you engage with the same conceptual ideas in different contexts?

So, why had we historically planned the order of our units of inquiry in a linear way? (When would one unit end and the next unit begin? How many weeks would we need to devote to each? What dates would work best?) The time had come to view the process in a different way.

We started from the most beautiful questions that drive change –

‘Why?’ ‘What if?’ and ‘How might we?’

Why should curriculum be viewed as linear?

What if we put the child at the centre and considered the learning in a more wholistic way?

How might we approach the big picture through the lens of transferable concepts, rather than the calendar?

In each team meeting, we began by writing the ‘related concepts’ (PYP terminology for the big transferable ideas) in each unit on individual sticky notes and arranging them to allow us a visual perspective on the learning as a whole, then underlining the concepts that are most transferable.

This simple activity raised a number of insights, such as:

• There are opportunities for further development of understanding, through concepts repeating in different units.
• Some concepts are more highly transferable across different areas and more applicable in life.
• Sometimes a unit has too many concepts, leading to less depth in the learning.
• Some combinations of units have concepts that interconnect more, while others are more subject specific.
• Some units lend themselves more to transdisciplinary learning than others…

Approaching the exercise conceptually, visually, in a non linear way led teachers very quickly to valuable conclusions about the big picture of learning – which units would flow on most logically from each other, which units might be best run concurrently and which units lend themselves to ongoing learning, woven throughout the year.

Some examples of ongoing, concurrent or even year-long, units of inquiry:

A Prep unit, exploring reading and writing as an inquiry.

Central Idea: We can receive and communicate meaning through symbols. 

Lines of inquiry:

• How sounds and words are represented
• How we  receive and communicate meaning through written text

A Year 5 unit which, after the initial provocation and exploration, will continue as a Genius Hour project, with learners pursuing their own inquiries and action.

Central Idea: Ideas inspire possibilities for action.

Lines of inquiry:

• How we bring our ideas to reality
• Skills and attitudes required for taking action

And our whole school, year-long central idea: Our choices define who we are as individuals and as a community, with different lines of inquiry at each year level, such as:

Prep (self)

• How our choices help us learn
• Choices in how we express our learning
• How we choose to use our environment to support our learning

Year 3 (individual and community)

• Who I choose to be  as a member of our learning community
• Choices that affect our learning community
• How diversity enriches our learning community

Year 6 (personal, local and global)

• Active citizenship
• How choices and decisions are made
• The impact of our choices and decisions  – personally, locally and globally

Learning isn’t linear…

The power of a provocation…

Whether it ignites an inquiry or shifts the gears of learning, if it’s fuelled by careful consideration and clear intentions, a ‘provocation‘ can drive powerful learning.

Considering the ‘power of provocations’ with our Lana Fleiszig recently, teachers explored the purpose of provocations, what could be used as provocation and the teacher’s role in the provocation process. The most important question, though, is what might the provocation reveal about our learners, their thinking and learning and where to next?

Our teachers collaboratively developed a list of questions to consider when designing provocations:

• Might the provocation excite/engage the learners and ‘hook’ them into learning?
• Might the provocation ignite curiosity and wonderings?
• Is the provocation likely to generate questions?
• Is the provocation likely to leave a lasting impression?
• Is there a degree of complexity?
• Might the provocation invite debate?
• Might the provocation begin a conversation?
• Might the provocation extend thinking?
• Might the provocation reveal prior knowledge?
• Is the provocation likely to uncover misconceptions?
• Does the provocation transfer the ‘energy’ in the room from the teacher to the students?
• Does the provocation have multiple entry points?
• Can the provocation be revisited throughout the unit?
• Might the provocation lead learners into a zone of confusion and discomfort?
• Does the provocation relate to real life/their world?
• Is the provocation inconspicuous and a little mysterious?
• Might the provocation lead learners to broader concepts that tend to carry more relevance and universality?
• Will the provocation make the best use of learning time and teacher preparation time?
• Might the provocation be student initiated or documentation of their learning as a springboard?
• Is the provocation likely to clarify the essence of what is being inquired into?
• Is the provocation the right provocation for the time planned?
• Might the provocation be best during the inquiry, rather than at the beginning?
• Does this provocation elicit feelings?

We’re looking forward to taking it further in the coming ‘ Reveal’ workshop with Sam Sherratt exploring ‘what it means to be aware of, receptive to and curious about what our students are revealing to us so that we can be constantly inquiring into our students and adjusting our planning accordingly.’

Do you begin with a purposeful provocation and then plan in response to learning?