Wednesday 20 August 2008

Muritai Inquiry Visit

We visited Muritai School on Thursday 14th of August as part of the ICWC Cluster. Andrew Bird the principal started by giving an overview of the Muritai Infrastructure and an outline of the culture of the school. He highlighted the staff turnover, especially at the senior management level.

There had been a focus on staff teams looking at ict integration. "The 'Action Learning' process was used as a model of investigation and they were "continually developing systems to ensure the children can achieve to a high level". Andrew also acknowledge the influence that 'Quality the Richmond way' by Cheryl Doig had had on Muritai.

Some other areas of interest/difference
  • specialist teachers for music (guitar, drums, performance)
  • music lessons in school time
  • Assembly was like a mini production - Emphasis on "high quality" performance

A panel of children from each syndicate shared how they saw the inquiry process. One of the most poignant comments came from 'Jed', when Mark asked, "What would you think if you were able to choose any topic to research/study". Jed said, he thought it would be quite over whelming. A very honest comment!!

Muritai's Inquiry was based on Blooms and the children carried out 4 inquiry's a year. We liked the expectation that the senior students were given specific criteria around output/action within an inquiry.

Overall it was a really postive visit...It's always good to see a different Inquiry model and to check out a different school environment.

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