Inquiry Learning in Room2

After our PD with Trevor Bond I started this terms inquiry by setting the class a task."We need to make the junior syndicate some toys to use during discovery time" I've found this really good not only for the students but for myself. Everyone knows exactly what we are trying to achieve and where we are going. Immediately after setting a task everyone was asking questions abut how we were going to do it, what we were going to make ect, even those who never, no matter how hard you try, ask a question. We also broke the task into three parts that we need to always keep in mind, that we need to make toys, they need to be something suitable to use during discoivery time and they need to be junior level toys. The next two weeks we have spent discovering how thing move with lots of hands on activities and experiments. I have only just introduce Solo's to my students and was very surprised with what year 2 and 3 students were really capable of. If we give our students even our juniors the chance to ask extended abstract questions or answer at an abstract level then they will. My class has understood the difference between the levels straight away and the symbols have made it really clear for them. One student has even made the link that on the xbox and playstation you can have multiplayer which is more than one player so that must mean multistructural is more than one question!! YAY. I was also surpirsed to see the students that I had just assumed would be able to ask at least one question couldnt and werent actually sure what the difference was between a question and a statement. it was a nice teaching moment to take those who were prestrucutal and ask them how can you change what you have said to become a quetion so that you are a unistructual questioner.
Not sure where to now exactly but we are all very excited to completing our task and taking action!!

Jenni Room 2