ICT Cluster Day at Coley Street

What a cool morning. I am only sorry I was not able to stay for the afternoon. The Journey Coley street have been only was both interesting and impressive. I was particularly impressed by the level of knowledge the children had. They were very articulate and had obviously been immersed in the language for some time.
The pure version of Inquiry was a neat concept. I think we are a mile away from that at the moment but I guess we all need to start somewhere.
Next week we have a group of rural principals visiting our school and after the great show the Coley kids gave us yesterday I am a bit nervous. The knowledge our children have about their thinking toolboxes etc pales in comparison. We will give it our best shot.
The level of PD we are getting on this contract is top notch. Being ale to work with a school like Coley Street on an ongoing basis and having them as a benchmark is great. I am very positive about the direction Opiki is heading and look forward to the "Our Lady of Lourdes" vist next month.

Coley Street Inquiry Journey

What an interesting morning. We found out about the Coley Street journey...

Implications and thoughts that arise:

• Develop, review and adapt our Inquiry Model.
• Discuss and develop stages within the process of Inquiry
• Exemplars need to be developed for the stages and process
• Inquiry Rubrics
• Oral language assessment
  
• Frameworks for tasks: telephone interview, web search, outside visit, wonderings...
• Graphic organisers
• Thinking Tool Box: Six Hats, Fogherty's Intellectual Storeys
  
• Directed, Guided and Pure inquiry for different years/ individuals...
• Language of inquiry...
• Pupil Ownership of Learning
• Sharing and celebrating of work
• Opportunities for teachers to plan and work together
• Encourage Buddy Classes
• Action from inquiry?

A lot to think over...

Term 2

So far...
Last term we continued to work on our inquiry model and the integration of ICTs into everyday learning. Every staff meeting we share examples of our ICT use and integration.

Inquiry Model














We have developed this model based on some teachers experience with Action Learning. We have already thought about combining some of the steps but will continue with the present this term.

Thinking Tool Box
We also had discussions about a thinking toolbox. We discussed tools and graphic organisers we have used in our classrooms and came up with a list and agreed we needed a school wide set so that there was a continuity of use and language.

Term 2
We are undertaking an inquiry unit in our classrooms this term and using the thinking hats and a range of graphic organisers to organise and extend thinking. In week 6 Jan Thomas is coming in to school for a staff meeting to discuss our progress and help us develop ideas...

Integration
We have had discussions about integrating ICT into our units. Ideas included:

• Animated movies to tell stories
• Video/ photo records of trips
• Wikispaces for noting taking and reporting
• Online timelines
• Online MindMaps
• Comicstrip software
• Podcasting/blogging our findings
• Internet research...
• Email, telephone, fax...