Guided Inquiry

I started off my professional reading this summer with this book:

"Inquiry helps kids to think creatively. When you capture their imagination they begin to think creatively and creativity solves problems for life." - middle school librarian (p.1)

This is exactly what I would like to students to be able to do: solve problems that are important to them and choose topics of interest that they would like to further investigate. Over the years, I have noticed that many students have difficulty when faced with tasks that involve choice.

Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st Century is based on the premise that "learning is a process of construction based on the educational theory of John Dewey"(p. 15).

This table breaks down the Dewey's phases of reflective thinking nicely.

As I learn more about how to effectively guide students through inquiry projects, I will be experiencing the same phases that they will experience. I am relieved to find out that the feelings of uncertainty I have right now about my own personal professional development are normal as they fall under the first phase: "doubt due to incomplete situation".

At this point in my project, I am looking for answers to the following questions:

1. How do we support inquiry based learning for students learning in a second language? Much of our instructional time is taken up introducing and teaching new vocabulary. How will this work if students are working on individual projects?
2. How do we give choice to students when we are studying a certain area of the curriculum? Is it true choice when we limit the choice to a number of subjects?

Blogging to document my professional learning...

I have wanted to blog about what I am learning, teaching, and doing during the school year as a French Immersion teacher-librarian and part-time French Immersion grade 4 teacher for a couple of years. I am now finally taking the plunge. This past spring, we decided as a staff to embark on a year of personal professional development. Blogging about my learning will help me in my journey.

One of the blog posts that was a real impetus for this direction in professional development for our staff was written by Patrick Larkin, Assistant Superintendent for Learning in Burlington Public Schools, Burlington, MA. In his blog post, We're Going Google Today - Can This Work In Schools?, he writes that if teachers choose what they get to explore for professional development, great things can happen. We can be certain that if teachers choose their own topics then there is a good chance they will be passionate about their Pro-D.

I am excited to see how this unfolds. We will be recording our projects on a Google Doc that everyone will have access to. The thinking behind this was that having our projects in one spot, easily accessible to all, we can be inspired by and help each other on this journey.

My chosen topic is Guided Inquiry in the French Immersion library. This will be my main topic, but as you can see by my blog name, I know that I will have other projects and goals around books, literacy and technology.