Questions, really good questions are crucial for learning. When students demonstrate curiosity their ability to really connect with texts, learning engagements and conversations is heightened. A curious learner asks questions, not always questions that need answers but questions. A teacher who responds with passion and curiosity allows the culture of inquiry to build in the classroom. Inquiry is so much more that a word, more than a chart on the wall, we don't 'do inquiry'. We engage in thinking and ask questions and find out something to ask more questions. We use authentic connected texts, resources and take time to reflect and connect. It is exciting. I love it. My students energise me and I hope my love of learning and the connected relationships with in the class helps to energise them. Students who understand that learning is not something someone does to you but something you do for yourself are empowered to take ownership for their own learning. Goal setting and looking forward need to be supported by the teacher but are largely driven by students recognising that there is a next step for them. Teaching is really an amazing opportunity to work with people. To collaborate with colleagues who are across the desk, down the hall or across the world. To learn and grow with others who are also trying to build positives in children, to encourage their creativity and curiosity, encouraging them to build inquiring mindsets that see the world as full of possibilities. When I look across the room full of students chatting and reading and writing and taking photos or video and drawing and building, I feel a sense of wonder that I have the job to facilitate the learning of these children. Their learning looks and sounds very different to the classrooms I sat in as a child and I am glad. I am not saying what I had was bad it was just different. The teachers who worked with me, no doubt were doing their best, times change and so does the way we teach. Children are still learning to read and write, to add and multiply, to learn and to think and to respond, it is just different. I love that my students notice my mistakes, that they question things that are said, they look for resources to support their learning. |
AuthorTeaching in an IBPYP school; interests: student agency, technology integration, growth mindset & the continuous cycle of improvement that is the world of education, learning and being! Archives
June 2018
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