Today I thought I would share why and how I started implementing inquiry based
learning in my own teaching practice.
When I first became a high school teacher back in the late eighties, at
the ripe old age of 24 I knew nothing.
I don't think I was inspirational or particularly memorable.
I became a teacher because that was the only way I could get an education.
Back in those days in South Africa, the government gave bursaries
to those who wanted to teach.
So that's what I did.
Because I knew that the only way out of a potential life of financial
struggle, would be to get an education.
I only stay for three years though.
The pay was pitiful.
And because I was a woman, I earned less than my male counterparts.
It annoyed me that I worked harder than most, and yet I earned less.
So I left.
Fast forward 20 years after working in financial services, marketing,
being a freelance food photographer.
Yes.
My photographs appeared in magazines.
I photographed a cookbook for a client and even products for some quiet,
famous clients and had a family.
And suddenly I find myself with an opportunity to teach kindergarten at
my children's international school in Dubai, where we were living.
And I loved teaching those kids.
I remember teaching a class of 24, I think which I had about
18 different nationalities.
As well as children who couldn't speak a word of English.
And as a bilingual person myself, I knew that just because a child doesn't
speak a word of English doesn't mean that they have a learning disability.
I get really worked up when I hear teachers judging kids that are ESL.
English second language learners, because I know that within six
months, those kids are speaking.
There's nothing lacking in them intellectually, just because they
can't speak English, just yet.
So now that I've got that out of my system.
Now in this fabulous school, , which was called Dubai American Academy, I
taught alongside the most incredible educators from across the world.
Each one brought their own unique perspective and together we created.
Knows days.
Uh, kindergarten one program where children learned the basics in
an integrated hands-on approach.
And in those days, these kids only came to school until 12 o'clock, which was
absolutely perfect for young children.
I think school hours are way too long for young children now.
And I also think that the long hours now have nothing to do
what's actually best for children.
But rather there are all sorts of other reasons at play there.
None of them, which have anything to do with kids.
I also realized that after becoming a mum.
My teaching was very much instinctive.
I was an em and natural inquiry teacher.
I love exploring and asking questions and I don't easily
accept things at face value.
I encouraged my children and my students to do the same.
That's just how I roll.
When we decided to immigrate to Australia, I knew that if I wanted
to continue teaching in early childhood, I would have to retrain.
So I enrolled as a mature age student at the ripe old age this time of 48.
Can you imagine?
In an early childhood diploma program, which was called the residency mode.
It was fantastic program that they don't have anymore.
But what it did was it meant that you were assigned to two schools each for
half a year, six months, six months.
Were you taught alongside your mentor teacher for two days a week, and then
spend two days working on assignments and one day at uni and lectures and workshops.
Plus, of course, the full time, six weeks prac at the school.
And it was during this year when I discovered who I really was as a teacher.
Having spent the first six months with a maintainer who was hands-on got kids
involved, worked with manipulatives.
We went outside to learn concepts hands-on and rotated activities in small groups.
Kids were happy.
And it suited my natural inquiry style.
The second half.
I spend at a direct instruction school.
This is where teachers taught from a script, mostly whole class teaching,
very structured and they used behavioral methods that didn't sit right with me.
Kids were subdued.
This school was driven by one thing, and that was NAPLAN results.
And NAPLAN is the national assessment program here in Australia, where students
in years, 3, 5, 7, and nine, are assessed in literacy and numeracy in a series of
tests, which focus on basic skills now we all know the direct teaching does give
you better results in the short term, but it does not allow for creativity,
individuality, or critical thinking.
And I did, however, learn how to be a really good explicit instruction teacher.
And I knew what to look for in a type of school.
I wanted to work in.
37 applications and one interview later, I found myself in this
school where I'm still employed.
Although I am a long service leave this year as those of you
that have been following me know.
But what was so apparent to me right from the start.
Just as it had been in Dubai, is that.
All children are the same.
They want to play.
Be with their friends, have fun, and explore on their own.
And feel safe and supported.
And so that's what I try to implement.
And of course it didn't take me long to know that I actually needed more.
So I went back to my Kath Murdoch books.
And I also spotted online a six day course with the nature pedagogy queen.
Claire Warden.
And taught with what I know to be an authentic, age appropriate inquiry
stance, where children are encouraged to be independent thinkers, questioners,
and drivers of their own learning.
Because that's how I want to be and , what I would want for my own children.
I don't want my own children sitting like potatoes, and having stuff that
might not even be relevant to them just shoved down their throats, which
they will never remember anyway.
I see our role as educators as facilitators.
Yes I still am a big proponent of explicit instruction for
literacy and numeracy because kids don't know what they don't know.
But alongside that, I believe children need to be given the
opportunity to explore for themselves.
To ask questions.
To look for answers and to produce products that are
unique and individual to them.
Not the dreaded 25 identical yellow ducks hanging off a washing line
we see so often in classrooms, which show no individuality at all.
To be an inquiry educator is a way of thinking.
It's a mindset.
And yes, some of us have that mindset naturally built in.
But just because that mindset was schooled and possibly parented out of
you doesn't mean you cannot get it back.
It just takes some self-awareness and a little bit of reflection
and honesty on your part.
And a desire to be different, a desire to change the way you do things, for
that innate curiosity to return to you.
I cannot condone education where kids are sitting dead quiet
following instructions to the letter.
And having their own personality and uniqueness schooled out of them.
As educators, we must do better than that.
We talk about educating the whole child.
But I think many don't walk the talk.
Without inquiry based learning, there simply cannot be a whole
child learning experience.
We're fooling ourselves and parents, if this is what we're advocating,
but it's not happening in classrooms.
So inquiry starts with your mindset.
It's about asking yourself some hard questions.
How can I teach this in a way that resonates with children and their
natural love of play and learning.
That was my starting point.
And the answer was inquiry based learning.
And inquiry didn't make my job harder, it made it more
interesting and more enjoyable.
I still taught my daily systematic, explicit literacy session in the morning,
followed by the group activities, some of which were independent and others directed
by myself or my education assistant, but those activities were set up
so the children could explore or answer a question, and work
collaboratively alongside their peers.
Let me give you a little example.
So let's say you're teaching children to write a descriptive sentence.
And you get a child, and this child has written a simple sentence.
What do you do?
Do you correct the sentence for the child?
Or do you ask that child how he, or she can come up with a
sentence that is more descriptive?
If you chose the second option, well, that's what an inquiry teacher would do.
Perhaps you'll give the child some guidelines as to where in the sentence
they need to think about adding words or use a more descriptive word, or you'll
send them to a word wall to look for more descriptive word to use, but you wouldn't
just correct the sentence for them.
You want them to do the thinking.
The students need to do the work.
Not you.
Let's take another example in maths or math, as the Americans say.
Let's say you want students to show all the different ways to make 12.
Would you give them a worksheet with missing numbers that
they just have to fill in?
Or would you give them an activity
where on the mat on a large sheet of paper in small groups and with manipulatives,
they can work together to come up with as many ways as possible to make 12.
And of course you aren't just going to leave them.
You're going to check.
See you need scaffolding who needs a more difficult number.
And you're going to handle any errors and misconceptions right there.
So that's just one part of inquiry.
It's that natural questioning we do.
And before, you know, it, the students start questioning to.
And here's the next part.
I soon realized that kids don't enjoy having their flow interrupted.
So I planned two consecutive days a week.
Where we were going to do what I called investigation time.
I was still doing explicit teaching modeling, using my talk for writing
to teach writing, my guided reading, where, if you've listened to some of my
previous episodes, you would have heard that I always linked to my science or
humanities and social studies curriculum to my literacy and guided reading,
because for me, that's the only way to get through the curriculum.
My learning intentions were always up and displayed for all the children to see.
When I first started with investigation, what I wanted was to teach investigation
and critical thinking skills.
To the students.
So I would use a whole class example of say, we were learning about life cycles.
I would choose for example, the darkling beetle.
And by the way, mealworms are the larva of the darkling beetle.
And I would be teaching report writing in my English sessions so then on
these investigation days, the children could choose their own animal or plant.
And then use the skills I was teaching them in the English lessons and at
the beginning of the investigation session, and applied that to
their own independent projects.
Children could also do whatever other projects they wanted to,
as long as it aligned with one of our learning intentions.
I'll tell you a quick story.
I had a new student coming to my class from another school.
Really bright little spark he's in year seven now.
Lovely boy.
He had an interest in the flu virus.
This was before COVID, by the way.
He asked if he could do a project on the influenza virus, not the flu
virus, he said the influenza virus.
I asked, does it meet one of our learning intentions?
He said I'll be back.
A few minutes later, he returned saying, well, yes, it links to our health because
he was going to show how we could keep ourselves healthy from the flu virus.
I said, fabulous, go for it.
Well, this project by a year two kid blew me away.
Not only did he ask his questions, find our answers, write up the
report, but also made the most incredible model of the flu virus.
Now another thing that I expected children to do was that when they had finished
their projects, they had to rehearse them.
And give a presentation where the class could also ask them questions.
This way of teaching meant the children did not just learn
about one lifecycle of the frog,
we didn't just learn that one example.
They learned about 20 different life cycles.
Because some kids may have wanted to work in pairs.
Because, each child did a project that aligned with their own interests and
they learned about other interesting projects like influenza, all because
the had the opportunity to explore.
Now was it chaotic?
Yes.
A bit, especially in the beginning when I was still trying to figure out
how to best operate in this model.
But as soon as I got organized and had everything at hand, because some children
wanted to make PowerPoints, others wanted to make models and narrate a movie to go
with that, others wanted to make booklets.
I think the best thing I did, was to get really organized, and then relinquish
control and trust the children.
And you know what?
It's a beautiful thing to be in a classroom where children are engaged and
working and busy and you feel this hum.
It's a beautiful energy.
Oh, my gosh.
It's making me want to go back into the classroom right now.
And I challenge anyone to tell me this is not the best way to teach.
Because the children weren't just left to their own devices during those.
Investigation sessions.
The skills that they needed to apply in those sessions were being taught to
them throughout the week, throughout the English sessions throughout
other sessions, where we were learning our reading and our writing.
And these students still performed exceptionally well in assessments.
They loved coming to school for the most part, they were all engaged.
And listen was I fabulous at all this in the beginning.
Of course not.
I made mistakes.
I still make mistakes.
It's different for every cohort.
But it's the only way I know of that really gets children
interested in learning.
So if you were sick and tired of the old talk and chalk worksheet,
heavy way of doing things.
That let's face the doesn't engage modern kids who are now tech savvy, then
take a deep breath and just have a go.
Your way doesn't have to be like my way or anyone else's for that
matter, you will find your own groove.
But for you to just be brave enough to get started, I have a resource for you.
It's called inquiry 1 0 1.
And I created it especially for educators who just want to get started with inquiry.
It's based around the same
system that I use in my own classroom.
But it's not free.
It's 12 Australian dollars, which is really nothing.
Simply because it's such a valuable resource, and in my experience,
nothing really good is ever free.
And you can get it by going to resources dot blooming curious.com
forward slash inquiry dash 1 0 1.
And on my site, I do have a whole bunch of other resources that are
free to help you with planning and organizing your inquiry units
and your teaching.
I'll leave a link to all of these in the show notes.
Listen, I hope that today's episode inspired you to have a go at
incorporating an inquiry mindset and a strategy into your teaching.
And I also want to say that if you need guidance or help, then just email
me at contact@bloomingcurious.com.
I'll leave a note to that in the show notes.
Thank you for sticking with me today and listening to this podcast.
I know there are hundreds of others that you can listen to, but you chose this one.
And that means a lot to me.
If you found this or any other episode, Of blooming curious,
inspirational, interesting, or simply informative, please click the share
button and send it to a friend.
And also leave a review that will help get this podcast higher up the ranks,
so it shows up for more people.
And talking about reviews.
I want to thank Deeboase1.. I think that's how you say it for
your lovely review you left.
Thank you so much.
I'm so glad that even after 33 years of teaching, you still find
my content thought-provoking.
So remember to check out the show notes for the links.
And I'll be back again next week.
And until then, Remember to stay blooming curious and leave a review,
please just like Deeboase1 did.
Thanks.
See you next week.
Bye for now.