Friday, May 1st

We spent time with Michelle Jones from PEBC last Friday synthesizing our learning about inquiry. How does incorporating inquiry based learning enhance our students’ opportunities to experience deep thinking, learning, and understanding?  How does inquiry based learning connect to our systematic instructional practices at Bill Roberts? As a staff we recognize the advantages to using an inquiry model, but many of us are still grappling with how to refine our practice. In mixed grade level and content groups we had a text based discussion around “Growing Better Inquiry Groups”, and a section from Comprehension & Collaboration Inquiry Circles in Action by Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels. This section discussed how we assess and evaluate the student’s inquiry process and end results. Then, the rest of our time was spent in our own inquiry groups. Groups are in the third and fourth stages of inquiry, coalescing and going public. We’re preparing to share our learning with the staff next Friday. Learning more about inquiry has impacted how we approach a lot of our curriculum and classroom decisions, and there is still a lot to continue to ponder.