What do I need to know???

This morning's focus group left me buzzing and freaking out a little. We have such a huge task ahead of us just exploring Inquiry, let alone creating a model that we can use in the classroom. And that lonely feeling you get as a teacher is so much more threatening when you're in front of your peers and ready to engage in what you give them. The pressure is scary and exciting, all at the same time.

We started out looking at the first stage of inquiry this morning; "Defining; What do I need to know?". Our question being How can we create an Inquiry Model that will work across faculties at Newlands College? We've identified that we want to learn more about Inquiry while we find/create a model that will work for our students and our teachers.

Starting with the question and then finding out what staff already do to explore questions in their classes was great. It was affirming to realise that I do the same thing as the others and that in a way we're already doing Inquiry. It also fitted the purpose of Inquiry in terms of using the prior knowledge of the learner as a starting point. They already knew that you begin with key words and so I didn't have to teach any new strategies. Awesome.

We agreed that sometimes kids struggle to find the 'right' key words and those ideas about using verbs, nouns and the 'driving words' I thought was cool. That we then try to define the words before moving on. We didn't do this step. How could we fit it in next time? Can it just be a part of the questions?

It also started bringing up questions that can be used to focus our inquiry, such as;

• How do faculties work inquiry into their teaching at the moment?
• What are the needs of each faculty in terms of Inquiry?
• Who's doing inquiry well?

At this stage I wondered if I should have started discussion on these questions. But I wanted to go with vocab. And it made me wonder how I could work consider these but still stay 'on track'. It's so hard to do that!

The collation activity where the learner writes each question on a separate piece of paper is a favourite. I like the time people get to think and then the discussion that comes from putting each question in a category really gets you thinking about the function of the question and where it fits in the 'big picture' of the inquiry. Hopefully some will get to use it in their classes. I'd like to know how and if it worked if you did, combining those W,W,W,W,H with the key words to come up with questions in sentences. I think we do need to look at other strategies to turn skinny questions into 'fat ones'. Think we can do that next week.

I'm excited now and thinking towards next week. I want to read what my group have put in their KWL charts so I know what has transferred so far and also what they feel they need. My question now is what do we do with the questions??? Do they still need to be in categories? How do we use the categories to our advantage? Are we ready to move to locating? I'm still a bit worried about defining the key words and wondering if it will work Ok just fitting that into the 'locating' section of the process.

Ah yes. The thoughts that are in my head. Along with the thoughts about my class trip, and buying a house and doing my masters.... What do I need to know?????