Contact: principal@saford.school.nz
Website: http://www.salford.school.nz
Principal Marlene Campbell discusses how Salford School worked through the development of their school vision and developed an inquiry-learning model as a key element of the school’s vision.
At Salford school we want ‘learning to learn’ to be a fluid concept that flows through everything we do. We are in the process of building a model of a learning pathway that incorporates the learning areas with our vision and values, and is constructed around links to the key competencies. We are designing this to look like a puzzle, with separate pieces that define a specific aspect of the curriculum but that fit together as the story of the way we teach and learn at Salford School.
Using the draft curriculum we first created a visual model that reflected our vision. We decided that learning to learn, and higher order thinking processes should be fluid and reflected in our practice, and our approach to our own learning.
The starting point for developing our learning model was :
The response to the questionnaire was 86%.
I was involved in the First Time Principals programme, and a lot of our PD was sharing discussing vision and values, and how different Principals were going about developing these with their school communities. I discussed the various ideas I had heard at these workshops with my staff, and we decided to try and design our own visual representation of our shared beliefs. We agreed that we would have “through lines” in our vision, with key priorities running through all our teaching and learning practice.
“Through lines are the overarching goals that incorporate the concepts that you most want students to understand during a course, term or year. Through lines are sometimes representative of one or more major whole school priorities.” Kath Murdoch
We read and became familiar with each of the learning areas, then agreed on the big ideas we wanted to explore. We are now making decisions about the way we want all our learning areas to be connected. We have taken statements from each area and we’re building these statements into through lines that will flow through and connect the learning areas.
At the moment we’re exploring the Key Competencies and how we’re going to include them into our through lines and then into our inquiry-learning model. Every week our staff meeting is professional development around the curriculum. All the staff is involved in all the discussions, having first become familiar with the content of our discussions through their own reading or through guided reading. The results of our discussions are taken to the monthly BOT meetings.
Our community consultation process is ongoing, both through the BOT meetings and through our fortnightly newsletters where we publish the topics currently under discussion and ask for comments and feedback. We do get feedback; people come into the school to tell us what they think and sometimes call or write. Last year when our Year 6 students were moving to their next schools, many parents and children talked to us about the conversations they had when they were choosing the schools. They asked questions at their interviews about the schools’ approach to teaching and learning, and whether the students were involved in inquiries, whether students were encouraged to do investigations arising from their own questions, and if the learning was all directed by the teacher. Parents made choices depending on the answers.
If students are used to being able to apply their own thinking and to take part in making decisions about what they learn and how they - they simply don’t want to be put in a position where a teacher leads the whole learning process. Students here now make connections of their own; they have a shared language that they know and understand that is part of the inquiry process, and a very powerful learning tool.
We had two days staff development with Kath Murdoch, and from this we decided to plan and implement a whole-school inquiry learning approach. Prior to the new curriculum document, inquiry learning tended to be an investigation into a particular topic and inquiries were often subject based. Now, for us, inquiry as a concept is an integral part of everything we do. We are more concerned with connecting the skills and knowledge from all the learning areas and using them as part of each inquiry. We try to connect all the learning we do, so that each aspect of the curriculum is linked. We try to encourage students to use the skills and processes they learn as part of the inquiry process in all their learning. They now ask questions more, they are aware of driving their own investigations and that each inquiry has a function outside the classroom. We are concerned with the sustainability of our inquiries, we all want to see and be involved in the outcomes of our inquiries as much as possible. Student’s inquiries are often motivated from a desire to make a difference to their own or someone else’s life. The inquiries we do arise from questions about issues around us.
We are using the inquiry learning model as a way of connecting learning areas and our concepts of learning, by establishing through lines that will guide our thinking, planning and teaching, and focus us as a staff on continually linking the goals established by the whole school community to our teaching programmes.
Inquiry learning at Salford is planned so that the inquiries can be strategically manipulated while still allowing the learners to pursue a real interest. The main point here is that the curriculum is an integral part of the inquiry process. Inquiry learning now has rigor within the process. It’s set within the curriculum framework and draws its content from within the specific learning areas.
One of our strategies for helping to inform the school community about our inquiries was the inquiry learning journal. These journals were used as a record of the work carried out, and also to inform parents. Each journal outlined the inquiry process and covered the expected reflection and action that would occur as a result of the inquiry. Teachers would build these during the inquiry with all students in the class contributing work samples, reflective writing, a record of progress, key questions marking each stage of the inquiry, and changes and developments made during the inquiry. Each student had the opportunity to take the journal home and parents could contribute comments and give feedback.
Our learning journals have now evolved into a blog. This has enabled parents to go online to see what’s happening in the classroom. They can also join up to our online community and contribute to the blog. The feedback we are getting form the community about this development is very positive.
Our online community, the learning journals, our parent evening and our monthly newsletters have been valuable in increasing our shared understanding about inquiry learning. We now have a parent community that promotes inquiry learning. Our students are becoming critical thinkers, they ask questions and they know that questioning is a focus.
Our school community is one where we promote and practice the concept of being learners together. We are beginning to understand that we can have an impact on the world around us and our parent community is learning about the nature of schooling today. All of us at Salford School are co-learners and part of a learning community in which we all share in investigations and make decisions that impact on us all.
Published on: 13 Oct 2008
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