Student inquiry, what's that?

A beginning teacher's experience.

By Manutahi Gray, Teacher and Amanda Key, Mentor Teacher

I was a blank canvas when I first started at SPS. I had never heard of the term ‘inquiry’ before and what it looked like in schools. I quickly learned what this means at my very first inquiry launch staff meeting. I instantly felt connected to the kaupapa as student inquiry encourages students to explore and find out more about things that are relevant and interesting for them. I felt lucky because the first inquiry I was teaching was about the history of Aotearoa. I focused on supporting my students to learn about the arrival of Māori to Aotearoa.

At team meetings, we discussed our ideas and planned our inquiry experiences together as a whānau. We followed the inquiry progressions and used keywords from them to create our learning goals. We have shared expectations across the whole school when keeping updated evidence for each of the stages of the inquiry progressions on our classroom walls. While learning how to teach, I sometimes found it difficult to take photos of the students' work to add as evidence to my classroom displays. As I become more experienced as a teacher, I am able to keep students' work updated although it is something I will continue to work on.

For my first inquiry, my students explored how Māori would have navigated the seas and the stories behind that journey such as Kupe and Te Wheke. They sorted their ideas between the ways different cultures navigated. They created 3 panels that told the story of Kupe and Te Wheke which was then added to our whānau waka.

Through teaching student inquiry, I have learned that I need to consistently draw on students' prior knowledge to keep them engaged in the learning. I have also learned that I need to manage my time so that we reach our required outcomes in a timely manner and are able to celebrate our learning with the rest of the school.