Introducing the Term 3 - Choice and Inquiry based Learning

Last week I did my 'Big Reveal' for the Term.  The 'Big Reveal' at our school is about introducing the topic for unit studies for the Term. The topic for this term is ' Entertainment and Leisure'.
I wanted my students to get hooked on to the topic right from the beginning so I gave them time to think about what they were interested in. All they said was rugby, soccer, gymnastics and other sport activities. They had no idea about the things that they could pursue and could get interested in. I wanted our inquiry to be a platform of innovation where students would get motivated to inquire and create not because I have asked them to research on a topic but about something they themselves were eager to find out.
To get them thinking and foster this spirit of inquiry, I planned a little expo of hobbies. I created a display in my class when my students were away for 'Kiwi Can'. The display consisted of books about different hobbies. There was a big range of topics e.g.

Countries, Cultures and Travelling

Inventions, Aeroplanes and Motorbikes

Human body

Ancient civilisations and castles

Story telling, Arts and Crafts, Gardening, Cooking, Painting Kite making, Mask Making and Drawing

I am a firm believer of choice and inquiry based learning. It increases student engagement and achievement. 

The display proved to be electrifying for the students. They spent a whole hour reading books to find what caught their interest the most. I could see the pure passion in their eyes. Even the ones who are usually not very focussed in class had something to say about their hobbies.

I felt a very satisfied teacher and was happy about the way I had introduced the topic to my students for the Term. In the end we made list the hobbies that we were interested to pursue and explore deeper.

• Cooking and Travelling
• Aeroplanes
• Robotics
• Circuits
• Farming
• Ancient Civilisations
• Kite making 
• Painting
• Counties and culture.

Ako

I had a great day yesterday. I was full of energy even when I reached home after school. I could help my daughter get the tools that she needed and also help her with her engineering project, run around the chores at the same time and still feel fresh and energised. Surely I had a great day at school and this was because I had enjoyed modelling a writing lesson for Ottilie who is a beginningTeacher at our school.

Ottilie was finding it hard to move some of her students in writing. They did not use powerful words for impact and this was the reason they did not score well.
At the end of the lesson I could motivate enough to make a difference to three of her students who are not at the Standard. There was one students in the group who was particularly too shy to participate. She barely lifted her head up to answer simple questions about her writing. She was not very enthusiastic about being in a group as she had very low self esteem.

I knew instantly, I needed to make them believe that they could be successful like all the other students in the group. For the purpose of modelling we chose mixed ability students so that students could learn of each other. so I buddied up my low achieving students with some students who were average in Writing.
We talked about sharing and helping each other in the group and said that their learning was not complete if they had not explained their work to a buddy or had not helped another student to be successful in the tasks that they were working on.

So I set them on a group worthy task where they had to write all powerful words for the word 'big'. At this point I noticed that the higher ability students immediately started talking to the lower ability students. The low ability students felt cherished when they saw their work being valued. They all participated eagerly and contributed to the discussions.

Later they used the powerful words to write descriptions about the sky tower.

They wrote their descriptions about other pictures using powerful words and felt successful.
To built up their confidence further, Ottilie today used them as an expert group to write a narrative about the picture that we had worked on. Ottilie said that all the students in our expert group helped the class out to use powerful words, and most importantly, the ones who had low confidence, were today, teaching other children in the class to use powerful words in their writing!

Intrinsically motivated! I would say.