Iterate
An essential part of your Inquiry is to regularly reflect on your learning. This is often the most challenging part of the process as it is more than just recording what you have done (this is for the time sheet).
Some sentence starters to help you be more reflective:
“In terms of self-management I have….”
“Working with my partner has taught me…”
“Something I learnt while research surprised me because…”
Here are some resources to help guide you with more effective reflection.
Source: Jackie Gerstein
Another guide to effective reflection is thinking about your development in some of the Key Competencies. For more detailed explanation, check out this guide (Download as a .pdf) – What are the Key Competencies. You can also see the work the class came up with on how each of the 5 Key Competencies relates to an Inquiry along with some example sentences.
Managing Self – means; study, organisation, punctuality, homework.
Relating to Others – means; respect to others, working with and learning with other pupils and staff.
Participating and Contributing – means; effort, attitude and completion of learning in class.
From time to time, you are asked to write blog posts on giving feedback on a goal you have set. Here is some advice on how to give effective feedback, based on the work of Hattie & Timperley (referred to by Guido Gautsh):
Feedback should provide answers to the following questions:
Where am I going? This clearly states the goal, i.e. what does success look like?
How am I going? This tells students how close to (or far from!) that goal they are.
Where to next? Give your students clear next steps to develop deeper understanding and self-regulation abilities
These questions all work on the four levels of feedback:
Feedback on the task (FT) — how well has the task been performed?
Feedback on the process (FP) — what are the strategies needed to perform the task?
Feedback on self-regulation (FR) — what is the conditional knowledge needed to know what you’re doing?
Feedback on the self (FS) — generally praising the students, (think ‘Good boy!’) which has been shown to be appreciated (only 10% of students don’t like being praised, though most like being praised privately, not in the classroom in front of their peers) but not effective in terms of student performance.
Some Examples of good reflection
Critical Thinking
So far this week I have been working hard to answer my final questions before starting to write my report. Once I have contacted my expert I will only need to write my report and create a presentation before I have completed my inquiry. I was surprised today because I was reading about sugar and found that some people said that sugar was good for some health needs, and then another website which said sugar makes these health needs worse. This surprised me and prompted me to go over my information to make sure that it was correct, and I think that this has helped me write a better report.
Collaboration
I fell like I have personally had a great start to the inquiry. But i’m a little concerned about my partner. He has done a very small amount of work so far in this inquiry and i’m not very impressed about it. It makes me annoyed that he would do this because my education is very important and my parents expect a lot from me. It all so makes me angry because there is not a lot of people that I can work with in my class. Because the people with more skill and a good work ethic are with a partner all ready. So i’m left with people that do not care about there education. I’m hoping that this problem is addressed by somebody.
