Spiral of Inquiry - Innovation in Schools

Think Beyond
Spiral of Inquiry - Innovation
So great to see Cheryl Doig again. Such an inspiring lady who works hard to support and benefit so many schools and educators

Judy
Linda
Visiting New Zealand from Canada

Give and Go 
Curiosity is important because....

Write your idea on a post it. Walk around the room and share your ideas 
swap over then find another person.

Gratitude and respect for each others ideas.

Give mic to a person and they choose who gets to share first. 

- Use at parent information evenings
- Giving children time to converse
- Reflecting technique reinforcing learning
- Immersion stage to spark minds and new ideas for the question stage
- Cultural responsiveness
- Team and staff meetings - sharing and talking ideas

Leadership is not about walking on water its about creating a foundation so that others can. 

Explore strategy of teaching math if you love it! Who would have thought! It actually increases student achievement.

Teacher Professional Learning in High Performing Systems

• inquiry based
• collaborative
• linked and coherent
• takes place over time
• professionally led
• The 'right' focus

http://www.learningfirst.org.au

No hands up 
What strategies are you using to hear everyone's voice?
How could it change your perspective of the groups understanding and knowledge?
How has technology supported everyones voice being heard and valued?

SMART goals vs HARD goals
Heartfelt - do we believe in it.
Animated - bring it to life
Required - is it needed
Difficult is motivating for teachers

Mindset
Fixed and Growth
Growth 

• embraces challenges
• keeps going when things get tough
• sees effort as the path to mastery
• learns from feedback
• takes inspiration from success of others

Fixed

• avoids challenges
• gives up easily
• sees effort as a waste of time
• ignores feedback
• feels threatened by the success of others

What has helped us to shift from fixed to growth mindset?

Take a risk
seeing an opportunity
be a learner
questioning
being given permission to make a mistake
perseverance over time.
Emotional tied
belief you can change

Effective Effort Rubric

Angela Lee Duckworth - The grit survey - self assess your mindset. 

TED Talks

Education seen from a psychological and motivational perspective 

Significant predictor of success - grit, passion and perseverance, stamina, sticking with your future day in and day out for years, working hard. 

What do you do to calm down? 11% increase in achievement through teaching students to calm themselves down. Grit development technique

HAWN foundation

Growth Mindset Challenges

I don't think Im a good enough teacher yet I will go away and learn how to teach you better

different spaces and journeys 

self check of where you are at

mindfulness - relaxation techniques creating a climate for change

put yourself in learners shoes - experts can forget

grit versus arrogance? 

mindset - difficult to change

variables that change mindset

time being an important factor

use of language to change mindset

makes you very vulnerable

fixed mindset parents

concerned about teaching content rather than holistic approach

How do we create the conditions to interrupt fixed mindset 

Four questions and why they matter

Disciplined approach to inquiry

Ask children at the scanning stage

1. Where are you going with your learning?
2. How's it going?
3. Where to next?
4. Can you name 2 adults in this school who believe you will be a success in life?

ALL What happens after the project is over? How do we ensure our pd is not a waste of time?

A spiral of inquiry that accelerates the implementation of learning. 

Collaborative process - the bigger the better

Scanning 

always start with question - Whats going on for our learners?

Focusing

Where are we going to put our attention? as a team, school, cluster?

Form a question - question can be too narrow or have answer in it. So needs to be a main focus then design an open question. 

Developing a Hunch

What leading to this situation?

How are WE contributing to it? Not parents society etc just us.

Exploring possibilities about our practices. 

Hunch versus hypothesis acknowledges gut instincts. 

New Learning

How and where will we learn more about what to do?

Avoid inclination immediate fast action.

Taking Action

What will we do differentlyWhat worked what didn't

Reflective process

Size matters - creates success and momentum needs to be meaningful but not overwhelming. 

Checking 

How will we check that we are making enough of a difference?

Inquiry to transform Learning

20 minutes at the start of the day - exercise, dance, movement, cookies and coffee for parents 

John Ratey - Spark

9.30 go to class have food then start learning. 

Lets take a step that people are willing to take!

7 Principles

1. Learners at the centre

2. Social nature of learning - cooperative learning, social constructivist

collaborative online platform. Design learning experiences for other schools, whats unique about our place compared to others schools. Our assets to provide opportunities for others.

3. Emotions are essential to learning - mindset, its everyones responsibility, increase learning for all. 

4. Recognising individual differences and prior knowledge

5. Stretching all students - demands hard work and effort - without excessive overload. Grit in Vygotsky zone

6. Assessment for learning - shifting ownership from teacher to student, Michael absolum, 

Leaders of their own learning - 

Embedded formative assessment - Dylan William

7. Building Horizontal Connectedness - holistic learning. connections to community, less bound by walls of school. Buddies across school, social action, school farms. 

Every school has a farm, every school grows cucumbers, secondary school turns them into pickles, primary school sell pickle to buy seeds for next year. 

https://deltalearns.ca/toolkit/key-principles