Which Inquiry Cycle?

I was at a team meeting today - I think it was a HOD team meeting (though I'm not a HOD) - it could be that it is called a Curriculum Leadership Team meeting (note to self: check what this meeting actually is!) and we were discussing the inquiry cycle. Being a PYP school, we are committed to inquiry and to students actively constructing their own meaning through purposeful learning. The document Making the PYP Happen outlines what inquiry looks like:

Inquiry, interpreted in the broadest sense, is the process initiated by the students or the teacher that moves the students from their current level of understanding to a new and deeper level of understanding. This can mean:

• exploring, wondering and questioning

• experimenting and playing with possibilities

• making connections between previous learning and current learning

• making predictions and acting purposefully to see what happens

• collecting data and reporting findings

• clarifying existing ideas and reappraising perceptions of events

• deepening understanding through the application of a concept

• making and testing theories

• researching and seeking information

• taking and defending a position

• solving problems in a variety of ways.

What we were talking about today is which inquiry cycle we should use. Should we have common terminology from Early Years up to Grade 5? We discussed the Super 3 (Plan, Do, Review), the Big 6, Kath Murdoch's inquiry cycle and others. All are very similar, though with some there is more emphasis on action. One of the things brought up at the meeting is that more emphasis should be put on making the world a better place. We felt that it would be good to have just one word that described each part of the cycle that was accessible to all students from EY to G5 and this is what we are playing around with right now:

• Tuning In: what do students already know and what are they asking. We initially thought this could be summarised in the word Ask, but tuning in really comes before asking - it is more like students thinking "What do I know?"
• Finding Out and Sorting Out: These could be summed up with the words Ask and Investigate.
• Going Further: This could be Create - which is actually the highest level of Blooms's Digital Taxonomy. We liked the idea that create came in the middle of inquiry cycle, not at the end, which allows more room for feedback.
• Making Conclusions: This could be Reflect.
• Taking Action: This could be Do.

There is still a lot more discussion to take place around this subject, but today we moved quite a long way forward in our thinking.

Photo Credit: Botanist by RadioFlyer007