Weekend away in Kuatonu - My Inquiry

This weekend we were extremely luck to go away for a few nights and look in depth into our inquiries and realise exactly what we're doing.  I went into this weekend with a few ideas on what I wanted to do for my inquiry and now I have so many different ideas thanks to the MIT crew.

We arrived late Thursday night where we were able to have a nice relaxing evening getting to know each other, followed by a few very funny team building activities on Friday morning.

We were then able to get stuck in, my goodness I didn't realise how much my inquiry was going to change!  We did an activity where we put everyone who we thought would support us in our inquiry down on an A3 piece of paper, and my goodness there are a lot!  I'm incredibly blessed to have such an amazing team around me who will be able to help me take on this inquiry.

We then looked at the big 'WHY', why choose this inquiry, why will this help our children.  Our original inquiry idea was challenged.  This was incredibly helpful as it got us looking into the 'nitty gritty' of our inquiry.  I ended up turning my inquiry question around as I found it was only focusing on one way that I could engage students in writing.  My question has now become 'How can I engage and give learners ownership of their writing to increase achievement?'

We then critiqued each others inquiries and gave ideas on where we think we need to improve (seen above).  I needed more hard evidence/data supporting my ideas.  So I need to go back to the drawing board, and get the data and the evidence of why I decided to inquire into this part of my practise after all.

This was an amazing weekend away just focusing on my inquiry, I learned lots and was able to apply my new learning to my inquiry that I have decided to take on this year.

'How can I engage and give learners ownership of their writing to increase achievement?'

Thanks heaps to Dorothy, Anne, Jenny and Russell for making this weekend happen!

2018 - What's happening? What's new?

This year I've been extremely lucky and have landed 2 extra positions, one being Manaiakalani Google Class OnAir, and Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers (MIT).  This year I will be inquiring into my writing practise and will be looking into how making movies can engage children in writing.  I will get students to write the scripts and to film the movies themselves I hope by doing this students will be more engaged and will have more ownership over there writing.

I'm very luck to be teaching in a shared space with 2 amazing teachers, we are teaching collaboratively and between us we have 79 year 3&4 children.  I'm extremely excited to learn and teach alongside these 2 amazing teachers.

This year I will be sharing my journey on my blog, so please comment and give me feedback, or ask any questions.