ISTE 24 Denver: Discover Denver! An Inquiry Adventure Featuring the City, a Smartphone & YOU!

This was an inquiry based hands-on lesson that put us in the shoes of our learners. Could be used for topics eg: Our Whenua or for school trips eg: Historical Village (this would require a teacher pre visit). Due to timings this would be a great activity for anyone needing to walk new teachers through the inquiry learning process. Achievable challenge for SEN/ESOL if Padlet resources were simplified. Ours had a photography component to it which kept everyone on-task and continuously generating questions as we moved between places.

Site link

Purpose - To learn the history behind the buildings 

• Curiosity is the strong desire to know or learn something

• Inquiry based learning triggers curiosity

• Inquiry positions learners in an active agent stance

• Be an active tourist - notice things, be involved, give students a role to play and they’ll imagine and become curious

• Look for civic pride 

• Inspire with some photos 

• What’s the story about who lived here before us?

Grouping Strategy:

• Padlet - read about Denver - construct questions - decide roles

• Self directed walk with a specific meet up point half way through

• Padlet with multimodal resources - read, view, listen to build background knowledge

• 10mins research before walking - show pic of point 1 

Good thinkers ask questions to ignite curiosity 

Process of the challenge:

• Front load - generate questions and add to list on the way 

• Collaboration

• Take creative photos 

• Reflect 

• Edit photos 

• Create a collage 

• Add a 6 word story to describe the story behind your images

Making my learners accountable...

Today during Reading I asked my learners how I would know they were actively participating in the learning. The unified response was, "Make sure we are talking about our thinking!"  To make sure this actually happened, I challenged each person to write down one question they asked that contributed to the collaborative task. Our prompts were: 'What question could you ask? Will it tell you the information you want?' I knew this could be easily overlooked then hurriedly made up so I scaffolded the challenge by handing each person one brightly coloured post it note. My thinking was that if they could see a small space to record their question it wouldn't seem to onerous.

The image above reflects success! Everyone recorded a question and only two students felt too shy to share their question during our reflection time. This is a huge shift in confidence so I took a step back and asked myself why this might have happened, and thought about what I might have done/said differently. With my learners working in collaborative groups I was able to roam around the room having deep learning conversations. Upon reflection the most common message I shared was Did it tell you the information you want?

The questions below are our evidence of how each person participated actively in today's learning. The highlighted questions are from my target students.

• What did you do for the summary?
• Can you share your summary please?
• Was Kate Sheppard part of the suffrage or did she make it?
• What was the suffrage movement?
• What is the meaning of suffrage?
• What is a petition?
• Does Women’s suffrage have capital letters?
• How effective was the suffrage movement towards the men that wouldn’t allow women votes?
• Why were some women against the women’s suffrage issues?
• Why did they change their minds about women’s suffragettes?
• Did Kate Sheppard’s personality influence the men’s decisions?
• What were Kate Sheppard’s major achievements that convinced the law to allow women to vote?
• Why was the law so specific with some people not allowed to vote?
• At any point did Kate Sheppard feel like giving up on her main goal?
• How was Kate Sheppard able to keep going knowing there was hate and conflict against her?
• Were all cultures of women allowed to vote?
• Did Kate Sheppard fear that she was going to lose the fight?
• What made Kate Sheppard want to fight for women’s rights?
• Did Kate Sheppard feel like giving up?
• How did Kate Sheppard become the leader of the suffragettes?
• Is the big circle building the NZ parliament building?
• When did Kate Sheppard find out that women couldn’t vote?
• Why did Kate Sheppard decide to start campaigning to get women the right to vote?
• What convinced the men to let the women vote?
• What made Kate Sheppard keep going even though people didn’t like what she had to say? 
• Why did Kate Sheppard join the suffrage movement? 
• What did Kate Sheppard do to become the leader of the women’s suffrage movement?

These questions reflect strong connections are continuing to be made. The difference is my learners have a purpose for asking their questions and today they were accountable for their learning. My next step is to actively plan ways to sustain this accountability.

SparkshopAKL 17

Feeling inspired after SparkshopAKL 17. Thank you Fiona, Justine and everyone who shared today.

Loved this session lead by Karen Ferguson as it allowed me to strengthen my own connections to SOLO in a very visual way. SOLO maps allow our learners to see the learning. We are all on a different learning curve and the continuum shows it is ok to start with no knowledge then build on learning as we make deeper connections. Thank you @karen0968 for the excellent resources you shared https://goo.gl/cnTBHC.

I wasn't able to attend this session but I loved these questions! Will definitely be introducing this dialogue to help my learners strengthen their connections to self evaluations. Great idea! Thank you @stuartkellynz.

Had so much fun attempting to create my own digital world with cospaces.io. Was immediately hooked in by the 360 images option in thinglink. Can't wait to use this! Thank you Angela Lee @nzleeangela for sharing.

Building connections in Maths

We spent some time this week looking at how asking questions can help our learning. Below is the list of our own Room 5 'crowd sourced' examples. Our next step is to create a display that encourages questioning during learning time.

What questions that you have asked, or heard someone else ask that have helped you in maths?

• Don’t be scared to come up and ask for extra help?
• Don’t be afraid to ask questions?
• Can you explain your thinking ?
• Do you know what that is.
• Do you get what I mean?
• What strategy should I use?
• Can you say it in a easier way so I can understand?
• Can you help me?
• Do you want be to explain in more detail?
• Does this make sense to you?
• Do you need help?
• What strategy should I use?
• Are there any maths game to help me?
• Is there a website we can practise on?
• Is there a different way to solve this?
• Does this strategy work for me ?
• Is this strategy work with bigger numbers?
• Do you understand now?
• Can you show me an example.
• What is the best strategy to use to find the answer to this question?
• Does this strategy work for me.
• Can you break the strategy down for me?
• How did you use your strategy?
• Do you know how to solve this?