Description
Due to current COVID-restrictions on travel into WA from Victoria, this PL will now be provided by Kath Murdoch as an online workshop. The content for the day remains the same. Participants will receive a log-in link prior to the event.
Vygotsky’s famous quote “Children grow into the intellectual life around them” offers a powerful and exciting challenge to educators in the early years. Our role in nurturing thoughtful, inquisitive, confident thinkers can be best enacted when we create opportunities for dialogue, inquiry and meaning making.
In this workshop, Kath Murdoch will explore a range of practical strategies to enhance opportunities for deeper thinking as we work with young learners. Sustained, deep thinking is nurtured through intentional questioning, listening and probing, the use of targeted vocabulary, the exploration of questions that are relevant and meaningful to the young child and the recognition of the powerful role that the environment itself can play in provoking wonder. Learning to think and growing the capacity to think in different ways for different purposes is a vital part of becoming a life-long learner.
Included in this workshop will be a focus on:
• Provoking and responding to interests
• How to question in order to stimulate creative, critical and reflective thinking
• Supporting sustained conversations about ideas using ‘talking moves’ and prompts and other dialogic techniques
• Using a concept (rather than topic) based approach to planning to enhance depth and breadth of understanding
• The use of thinking routines to make thinking visible and strengthen thinking skills
• The careful use of language by educators designed to open up rather than narrow thinking
• The role of a cycle of inquiry in taking children from shallow to deeper thinking.
Kath's workshop will be structured as follows:
8.45: Zoom room opens for participants to join
9-10.30am: Session 1
11-12.30: Session 2
Lunch time during which participants can arrange to come back into the Zoom room to chat with others if they wish
1.30 -3.00pm: Session 3
3 - 3.15pm: Kath will stay in the Zoom room for informal Q & A for anyone who wishes
Presenters
Kath Murdoch

Kath Murdoch is an experienced teacher, author, university lecturer and popular consultant who has worked for many years in schools throughout Australia, New Zealand, Asia, America and Europe. She is widely respected for her work in the field of inquiry based learning and integrative curriculum in which she has taught, researched and published for well over 20 years.
Kath began her professional life as a classroom teacher in Melbourne. Her fascination in how students’ constructed their understandings - and her interest in the way questions and big ideas could drive curriculum soon lead to a passion for integrative and inquiry based methodologies. This passion has become a career long focus for teaching, research and writing and the methodologies in which Kath specialises are now central to curriculum frameworks in many parts of the world – including the popular International Baccalaureate, PYP program.
Critical to Kath’s success is her continued involvement in classroom teaching. Whether it is to demonstrate techniques, coach teachers or build her own repertoire of practices, Kath is committed to regular and ongoing work with students. Her classroom work and research feeds a dynamic and ever-evolving expertise in the area of integrative and inquiry-based learning.
Kath’s professional development offerings are diverse. They range from intensive partnerships with schools to develop inquiry programs and practices over several years through to one-day workshops for beginning or experienced inquiry teachers. Whether in her home town of Melbourne or on the other side of the world, working with a team or speaking to a packed auditorium Kath’s style is refreshingly practical, inclusive and always connected to the real world of teaching.
Terms & Conditions
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Segments
Webinar Event
Date / Time
19 Aug 2021 Starts: 08:45 Finishes: 15:15Delivery Format : Webinar