Teacher Inquiry

Last term we shared our teacher inquiries with a small group of our colleagues. I found this process really interesting and beneficial for a number of reasons. Firstly by sharing my own inquiry I was able to really see the progress my inquiry child had made. By articulating and explaining the process I had been through it was clear to see this child had made huge progress both academically and socially since the start of the year. I think sometimes it is easy to overlook these successes when you work with a child every day but taking time to sit back and reflect with others gives you time to appreciate how far they have come. Another really valuable part of the sharing process was listening to other people’s ideas and processes. It was really interesting to see how teachers of other year levels had implemented their different ideas. An idea I took away was the idea of giving really focussed feedback in writing. This is an area I feel I need to work on as a teacher as I often feel overwhelmed trying to give feedback on too many areas of writing e.g. surface features, ideas, structure etc and sometimes feel my message is lost. The teacher sharing this idea explained that they trialled only giving feedback on the child’s specific writing goal and nothing else. I would like to try this process as I feel we set goals with the children but often I have found they get stuck in the book and then rarely referred too. I hope by doing this the children’s goals will become more relevant and achievable.

A final part of the sharing process I found useful was listening to other teachers talk about children I may teach one day. This really gave me a sense of the village raising the child as we were all able to comment on siblings behaviour or if we had taught the child before. I see the teacher inquiry process as a really valuable part of getting to know our priority learners and see their journey through the school. I am interested in how these inquiries get passed on to other teachers as I would be interested in reading another teacher’s inquiry on a child I may have next year. I think this information would be an invaluable insight to the child’s successes and struggles.