JIS Inquiry Matrix

On Thursday and Friday last week, a group of twenty or so teachers from Pattimura and Pondok Indah Campuses met at our house to work on our new matrix of units of inquiry. The day started with an overview of the task followed by a review of the UbD slideshow of stage one, specifically so that we would all be on the same page regarding identifying Big Ideas and crafting Enduring Understandings.

The process involved looking at the newly adopted standards in groups of four and deciding on Big Ideas in each of the four strands, just for grade 5. After reviewing what we'd all come up with, the next step was to work out the big ideas for the rest of the grades.

Once all groups had posted their Big Ideas, everyone individually put tally marks against the Big Ideas they felt were best. Then people took a Big Idea from anywhere on the matrix, and crafted an Enduring Understanding that would suit, constantly referring back to the standards.

And that's where we got to at the end of day 2.

My thoughts:

• It was wonderful to have discussions about inquiry learning with colleagues who had experienced it in a variety of schools prior to coming to JIS.
• There need to be a clarification of terminology because of that variety of staff.
• In some cases it might be better to have two (or more) Enduring Understandings rather than try to "force" standards into one EU.
• If we are using the new UbD template, we need to be able to download a usable version.
• If we are using Kath Murdoch's model, then the planner may need to be a hybrid. This needs to happen fairly soon.
• Maybe we should have had a grade 6 teacher there.
• Before we can go much further training in UbD needs to be planned.
• The health standards are not written in such a way as they can be added.
• Looking at some created EUs and thinking past them to how the teaching might happen I wonder if we have resources to support them.

I hope the momentum doesn't slow down...