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Implementing Inquiry
As a reflective practitioner, I am honestly excited to commence another year in a revolutionary educational setting. This year I have ambitions to excel my teaching and learning by implementing the various Professional Learning that I have been fortunate to attend in 2020. In particular, I am finding that I am able to think more creatively about my role as a facilitator of learning in an innovative context. This is demonstrated through enriching entry events whereby my vision is to create activities that prompt students to inquire into the topic so they discover the answers and relay this back to the class.
The Year 8 Visual Arts unit, “What the Pop?”, guides students to respond to the driving question “How can we use our art to immortalise contemporary culture?”. Rather than giving an explicitly taught lecture on Pop Art to build context, I placed a series of images around the learning space. From this, students were instructed to walk around the space and identify works they considered “Pop Art”. Without any further context, students were up and moving around the space inquiring into the topic purely by observing artworks from differing periods of time. At the conclusion of the lesson, students comprised their own statement to explain the Pop Art movement based on artistic factors that were prominent across multiple artworks.
This is just one example of innovative methods of inquiry as I constantly try to apply my Professional Learning. It is hard to believe that this style of teaching is entrenched in my pedagogy. I always knew that prompting students to develop their own answers was more effective than telling them, however, before I started my journey at St Luke’s, I thought this was an over glorified theory. Something that was spoken about as an ambition in a dream classroom. Yet here, it is reality here. It aligns so perfectly with my mentality of organised chaos. I am so grateful to be part of an environment that values experiential learning, play learning and critical thinking that underpins the cycle of inquiry.
The Year 8 Visual Arts unit, “What the Pop?”, guides students to respond to the driving question “How can we use our art to immortalise contemporary culture?”. Rather than giving an explicitly taught lecture on Pop Art to build context, I placed a series of images around the learning space. From this, students were instructed to walk around the space and identify works they considered “Pop Art”. Without any further context, students were up and moving around the space inquiring into the topic purely by observing artworks from differing periods of time. At the conclusion of the lesson, students comprised their own statement to explain the Pop Art movement based on artistic factors that were prominent across multiple artworks.
This is just one example of innovative methods of inquiry as I constantly try to apply my Professional Learning. It is hard to believe that this style of teaching is entrenched in my pedagogy. I always knew that prompting students to develop their own answers was more effective than telling them, however, before I started my journey at St Luke’s, I thought this was an over glorified theory. Something that was spoken about as an ambition in a dream classroom. Yet here, it is reality here. It aligns so perfectly with my mentality of organised chaos. I am so grateful to be part of an environment that values experiential learning, play learning and critical thinking that underpins the cycle of inquiry.