Purposeful reflection through the Spiral of Inquiry

By Kendal Orr, Year 7 and 8 teacher, Kāhui Ako Across School Coach, Ngāi Tahu

The Spiral of Inquiry process is an integral part of my teaching because it is a reflection with the specific intent of building the best teaching practice, and that goes hand in hand with student achievement for the tauira in my class right now.  As teachers, we naturally reflect on a daily basis, after a conversation, a lesson, or a unit, but the Spiral of Inquiry makes that purposeful and focused. 

Writing has been the target area of our Spirals of Inquiry across our Kāhui Ako this year.  This came from an identified need in our 2022 achievement data and it is great to have this consistency across the schools.  It’s been really helpful to be able to get ideas from the other Year 7 and 8 teachers about things that have worked for our learners, especially as I am new to Sylvia Park School and the community is a little different to those in other schools I have taught at.

The scanning part of the process has really helped me to get to know the targeted students.  I started the year with no assumptions about their learning at all so this has helped me to quickly understand them on a deep level.  I find that the tauira that we select for our spirals are often kids who tend to slip through the cracks a little so this is an excellent opportunity to focus on them and their learning.  Also, by making our Māori students our priority, and being Māori myself, it was extra motivating to find strategies that would work.  The spiral has helped me to reflect on HOW I can teach writing for the needs of THESE specific kids.

From looking closely at the work by my target tauira I found that they wrote the way that they speak, the planning for their writing did not have structure required for the text types they were attempting.  So after conversations with other teachers, and reading some of the PD literature, I decided to change my practice and the way I used scaffolds such as mind maps with the students.  These are not big changes, just incremental little things, along with a conscious awareness of the questions I am asking the kids and the language I am using, but I can already see the impact on their writing.  These changes are targeted at these five students but I have found that it is actually helping many other students in the class as well.

New learning is a huge part of the Spiral of Inquiry and I enjoy the collaboration between our colleagues as we discuss what may have worked before and what we will try now, as well as how it is going.  We have been seeking research based strategies from the Effective Literacy Practices book and Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey’s work to integrate.  It can sometimes be difficult to fit readings into our schedules but is much easier when we have a specific question to address through the Spiral.  Trying new things together also helps to break down the walls between classrooms and have conversations about what is hard and what is working well. 

Using the Spiral of Inquiry as the cornerstone of our Professional Development helps me to be deliberate about building my practice alongside the achievements of the tauira in my class.  It builds a culture of professional trust and sharing and ensures I am the best teacher I can be.