Inquiring Minds Want to Know
This year, as part of our Secondary Operational Plan and in partnership with the Curriculum Department and Trevor Mackenzie (author of Dive into Inquiry), we are working towards implementing structures and strategies that support inquiry based instructional practices … practices that align with our competency-based curriculum. Through our monthly Staff Learning Opportunities (SLOs), we are providing support and space for our learning communities to collaborate and share ideas. In our Deep Learning Blocks we are creating the classroom sandboxes wherein we can play, discover new ways of doing by moving ideas into action, and create inquiry-based learning experiences for both students and staff.
Our Learning Targets for this work have been clearly established:
- We can use what we are learning and experiencing to grow our inquiry mindsets as administrators, department heads, and teachers;
- We can work as a school team to develop an inquiry question that will help build a culture of inquiry within our community;
- We can transfer what we are learning, symmetrically, from our adult classrooms to our student-centered classrooms;
- We can contribute feedback on others’ inquiries in a way that is kind, helpful, and specific.
All of this work is symmetrical and allows for emergence. School administrative teams are beginning their learning journey by creating a school-wide inquiry in which, with their staffs, they develop a driving question and a concomitant “Need to Know” list. Department Heads will be working towards developing an inquiry question that focuses on a growth area for teachers and students in their respective departments (i.e. How might we increase levels of student agency in our classes?). Teachers, with the support they received during SLOs, will work towards developing a driving question for a class-based inquiry in one of their Deep Learning Blocks. As it is within the adult classroom, so too will it be reflected in the instructional classroom as students work with their teachers to determine a list of “Need to Knows” to commence their inquiry-based learning experience.
In the end, when we have the opportunity to explore inquiries that are genuinely meaningful, inevitably amazing things will happen. Here’s to an amazing year of learning, together.