Kath Murdoch: Engaging With Texts through, for and as Inquiry in the Early Years

Description

LITERACY AND INQUIRY

As we inquire, the information we encounter is in the form of some kind of text. This might be an image, a podcast, a website, a book, a diagram, an art work, a piece of music, a spoken story  - anything that communicates ideas that contribute to our exploration of our questions. Inquiry-based teachers not only help children learn to access a range of texts as they explore but teach them HOW to critique and meaning-make as readers, listeners and viewers.  Similarly, journeys of inquiry inevitably mean that children are composing and producing texts to share their thinking. Inquiring into HOW to produce those texts in effective ways for real purposes and audiences can become a wonderful ‘layer’ in the integrative inquiry experience.

Whatever they are inquiring into, young learners are always building their capacity as readers, viewers, writers, speakers and listeners. This may be attended to in a ‘stand alone’ fashion (viewers i.e. –learning how to inquire into a picture book, learning how to inquire into the way words are spelt) or carefully woven into the planning for an integrative inquiry. Texts are also used as powerful provocations to stimulate wonder and invite deeper thinking. In turn, a journey of inquiry can help young learners see the power of texts to influence others and stimulate action.

In this workshop, Kath will be taking a deep dive into the role of texts in journeys of inquiry in the early years classroom. Highly interactive and practical, teachers will walk away from the day with new ways of thinking about adding ‘literacy value’ to the work they do as inquiry teachers and/or a stronger inquiry stance to their work in literacy.. Immediately transferable to the classroom, the texts and techniques shared in this session will help you build a culture that supports meaningful inquiry every day.