Kath Murdoch - Getting Personal with Inquiry Learning (3-6)

Description

NEW DATE FRIDAY 23/09

We are excited to announce that Kath Murdoch will present this workshop for AISWA Teaching and Learning at the Noogenboro (Herdsman Lake) Discovery Centre.

Participants will receive a copy of Kath's new publication, Getting Personal with Inquiry Learning.

Audience: Year 3-6 teachers and Primary Curriculum Leaders.

There has been growing interest in ‘personalised learning’ for many years now. Increasingly, schools are making arrangements to provide more opportunities for learners to learn to be self-directed and to have their needs and interests met through the curriculum.  An inquiry-based approach is in itself, an approach that recognises the importance of learner voice and choice and of linking new learning to the existing knowledge, experiences and interests of the child.  In this sense, inquiry has always been an approach that nurtured agency, but this can be amplified when young learners can pursue the questions, interests, problems, and wonders that matter to them.
Teachers who use an inquiry-based approach are committed to helping learners ‘learn to learn’ and to equipping them with the skills and dispositions to more independently investigate questions, problems, issues and interests. But what opportunities do we give learners to do this beyond the “units of inquiry” we may develop?   How can we provide young learners with real opportunities to explore the things they are curious about?  And why is this so important?
  
This workshop is all about bringing an inquiry-based lens to our work with young learners and, in particular, building out capacity to use their interests and questions to inform our planning and teaching. Kath will share a range of structures and approaches to providing time for young learners to investigate their personal passions and interests in purposeful and manageable ways. 
We will explore the following questions with practical tasks and lots of recent examples from classrooms:
• Why is personal inquiry important? What’s our purpose?
• What is the role of shared inquiries that might be more teacher-initiated? 
• What is the teacher’s role in supporting young learners’ personal investigations?
• How might personal inquiry connect with the curriculum? 
• How can we help young learners identify their interests? How can we inspire wonderment and curiosity?
• What skills and dispositions help support young learners as they inquire? 
• How can we make this manageable? What systems and routines and classroom set ups make it work?
• How can we involve the wider community and communicate the importance of this practice to parents?