Welcome back for another session of our book club on Getting Personal with Inquiry Learning by Kath Murdoch. We are focusing on sections 3.4 - 3.5 in this episode to learn how to confer and sustain the inquiry process. Before we begin, we need to give a big shout to Nisha Vahi, our moderator for this session. Nisha helped us to explore new reflection tools: Root, Bark, Branch from Shifting Schools and Triangle-Square-Circle from Harry & Rosemary Wong in The Classroom Instruction Book. Now, we have new tools to help our learners stretch their thinking! Conferring: the key to successOnce we have launched the personal inquiry process, we need to continuously follow-up in order to sustain the process. As a teacher, this was an opportunity for growth in my practice. I regularly captured the data and evidence of learner growth, but I was not consistent in relaying it with my learners. This section reminded me of the importance of consistency, because we all can do better. Kath states, “Conference is a deliberate, usually scheduled opportunity to check in and provide feedback and support that allows both the educator and learner to consider next steps. Skilled conferring means we must be fully present to the learner’s offerings and simultaneously notice what they are revealing and the implications for next steps.” The part that resonated with me in this passage is “revealing”. How well do we listen to all aspects of what our learners are revealing to us about their process? How can we manage this in our context? Kath suggests, “The power needs to remain with the learner…where the learner realizes what they need to do next because of deft questioning, probing, and what Matt Glover describes as ‘nudging’.” The part that sits in my heart right now is that the power remains with the learner. It’s made me think about the processes and systems I need to put into place for this to happen. How about you? What do you need to add into your practice, so the power remains with your learners? When conferring with early learners, Kath suggests using a play-based workshop that is less formal and brief. “Confer with two or three children per session. These ‘focus learners’ are given particular attention during the workshop, with notes made about their learning, dialogue recorded, and photographs taken.” This makes sense to me as our early learners will need more tangible pieces of evidence in order for the power to remain with them. There are some salient points of what to do while conferring. We need to listen, ask clarifying questions, and document our interaction in a variety of ways. I believe most of us engage in this practice, but Kath provides some amazing question prompts and sentence stems to spark the dialogue on pages 120-121. There are prompts for suggesting, sharing, and goal setting too. If you’ve read a book by Kath, you know that she never suggests anything without providing practical examples. One thing that really shouted out at me off the page was ‘mind your language.’ What does Kath mean by this? “The words and tone we choose to use as we confer with learners have a strong influence on the way they see their learning and their sense of agency.” She gives some practical examples on page 121. Here’s one. Instead of…
Try something like…
The language changes it from being judgmental and punitive to naturally inquiring about the thinking process. Transformative in my opinion. There are equally amazing talking prompts on page 122 to support your process. Supporting and sustaining the processAs we know, for anything to be sustainable in our practice, we need systems in place to support it. Learners need to know how to wield each of the parts and manipulate them for their own use. Kath remarks, “As learners work through their inquiries, we need to be clear about our roles and develop systems that ensure there is some routine and predictability within this dynamic and varied learning environment.” Kath suggests using a simple inquiry cycle as a possible scaffold for the process of sustainability. On page 125, there is a sample inquiry cycle for learners seven and older that has sample questions and each component of the inquiry cycle to answer those questions. Just a reminder the inquiry cycle is comprised of these components:
During this process, our learners will get side-tracked, because so many new ideas will be swirling in their minds at the same time. On page 127-28, there are tools to help learners stay focused on meaning making, managing multiple inquiries, harnessing the talents of older learners and managing group sharing and reflecting on their personal inquiries. Once a week, consider hosting a personal inquiry workshop. Here are some ideas found on page 129. Kath provides some detailed ways for learners to:
The early learnerOur early years teachers, we have not forgotten about you. In fact, Kath has created an entire section dedicated to your processes on pages 130-133.
Kath reminds us, “During the early years of primary school (generally 4-7 years) most personal inquiries originate through play and engagement with materials. The role of play as a context for inquiry cannot be overemphasized…With the right mix of open-ended materials, time and trust, inquiry is as natural to play is a fish is at home in water. Play involves experimentation, testing out ideas, imagination and risk-taking.” We know that an early years learner does not operate the same. Their personal inquiries may last one lesson or be carried out over several days. Remember that this is all about exploration and discovery. On page 131, there is a detailed discovery workshop template with certain considerations. I will share one with you. Curating the space “Educators organize materials around the learning space (indoor and outdoor) to invite learners to experiment, investigate, problem solve, create and imagine. Some of these materials may be permanent features of the space while others are deliberately designed as new or temporary provocations. This may be set-up before the session and/or it may involve learners in selecting and organizing materials based on their interests. Materials should be open ended and invite sensory engagement. Materials may be deliberately designed around particular concepts.” Some other considerations for a discovery workshop include: gathering, focusing and planning; investigating, creating and doing; conferring; reflecting and sharing. Just like upper grades, we need to consider how learning will be organized, documented, and the learning outcomes. There are so many goodies in this section for you to read. To conclude, Kath provides a list of roles an educator takes on in a personal inquiry workshop on page 134. My favorite is this one: Set up systems Spontaneity and flow benefit from structure and organization. Design systems that help hold space and freedom. I hope you were able to take away some nuggets from this section and we will see you in the next episode where we will unpack sections 3.6 - 3.7.
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