Inquiry is a popular word in Education today. For me it is new approach to teaching that completely shifts the way you teach in your classroom. Right now in Ontario we are thrust into a situation where new curriculum has taken effect with the focus being very inquiry based. But how do we as a group of self confessed obsessive compulsive and control focused teachers change our whole understanding of how to teach if we don’t feel that we are actually teaching. Over the last two years I have attempted to implements the beginnings of inquiry based learning, flipping my classroom, and allowing student directed learning. However I can’t help but feel at these moments that I am cheating because I didn’t teach all day long. Through inquiry my whole understanding of teaching is being turned upside down.
Therefore whenever I encounter a new pedagogy I try to slowing morph my teaching practices to fit the new standards. I wouldn’t say that I am an early adopter, but I am comfortable of change when I do the work to truly understand it.
So this is what I want to do. Explore the internet and other resources to figure out what inquiry based learning will look like in my classroom.
I will start with the information I found on the Galileo Education Network from Calgary Alberta.
The have a rubric that you can use to help you understand as a teacher to understand where you are in your ability to implement inquiry in your classroom.
So I ‘marked’ myself using this rubric and here is how I see myself stack up in my use of inquiry skills.
Authenticity: Developing
Academic Rigor: Developing
Assessment: Developing/Emerging
Beyond School Value: Developing/Emerging
Digital Technologies: Emerging
Active Exploration: Developing
Connecting with Expertise: Beginning
Clearly my goal areas in inquiry are getting my students more access to experts in the field. Using this will help to get students a variety of perspectives. Being that there is a great university down the road from my school perhaps this might be easier than I think.
Here is one of their teachers explaining how she uses inquiry in her classroom.
Stay tuned and learn along with me as I attempt to improve my practice in Inquiry Based Instruction.
