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

Creativity in LS2...

This term our Manaiakalani staff meeting reminded us about the importance of creativity in learning. Miki and Josh used their creative skills to create this image for the title page of a DLO they are in the process of creating. 

The DLO is at the moment a work in progress but when I saw what they had done so far I wanted to share it because I think it is a great example of creativity. Miki and Josh are happy for me to share their work and emailed me this to add to my blogpost:

'We are creating an animation about the muscular system. This is a Google Presentation and we used different shapes and lines to create an arm which shows you our muscles. We have used the same drawing of the arm muscles to create a GIF that shows what our muscles look like when we move our arms on the next slide. To get it to look like this we tested some shapes and lines to try to make it look real.' - Miki and Josh

I am looking forward to seeing their finished DLO because the language the boys used when they were explaining to me how they have used lines and shapes to show how the muscular system works was rich and really showed the deep learning that has taken place.

Silent Challenges...

Some of my favourite lessons this year have been our silent challenges. The idea behind this is that instead of me 'telling' my learners what it it I want them to do, they need to read and understand from a series of written instructions what their task is. By doing this I have encouraged my learners to read for meaning and shown them the importance of making sure they understand what it is they have read. These tasks allowed the collaboration between my learners to shine at it's best.

The challenge below was set only for my reading group. One of the gaps in their learning was reading for meaning when a text is not scaffolded and unpacked. I decided this would be a fun way to show them why this was important and how they could make sense of a text that they had little connection to. To make sure everyone found success I created mixed ability groups so they could support each other. The learning arguments or dialogic discussions that took place were rich and afforded me great opportunities to make some important anecdotal observations.

The rest of the class saw asked for a similar challenge so I created one that embraced our learning in maths and inquiry. Never would I have imagined that 52 Year 7 and 8 learners would be outside testing flight distances and be so on task! The discussions I heard were based on adaptations that could be made to get more distance and were accompanied by laughter, team spirit and outstanding group collaboration.

Speed Dating at PBS

Last week I saw a teaching idea shared by the Year 7/8 teachers at Stanhope Road School. They used 'speed dating' to get to know new vocabulary needed to help their learners make connections to their new inquiry. I adapted this idea to our inquiry getting me learners to share their knowledge of two components of our learning. My learners had a lot of fun and made strong connections to both topics through lots of rich discussion. 

Putting It Altogther

This is the Thinglink I made to share the journey of my 2015 MIT inquiry. All of the MIT inquiries for 2015 are now complete and can be accessed on the MIT page on the Manaiakalani site. 

If you would like to access a copy of the learner speak rubric we made you can access it here. Please remember that our rubric is not a blackline master that can simply be introduced to another learning environment with the expectation that similar connections will be made.  It should be seen as something that is to be adapted and repurposed so that connections can be forged to what will then become their own resource, written in their own language.

Maniakalani Hui Presentation

This was my presentation at the Manaiakalani Hui. It reflects my inquiry journey so far. Our next step is to share our rubric with the other classes in our school with the challenge to adapt and change our resource so that it becomes their resource. We're looking forward to their feedback.