Framing your enquiry question
Which aspects of my practice do I want to change?
What do I want to accomplish over the next x weeks?
So far you have looked at;
- how your students currently deal with being stuck; their level of sophistication (Section 1a)
- how your classroom culture supports getting unstuck; the stuck friendliness of your classroom (Section 1b)
- practical ideas for ways of dealing with stuckness.( Sections 2)
This section is about sorting out what you want to achieve and drawing up a do-able enquiry plan. Learning enquiry plans create a record of what will be done and as such are important documents. Research has shown that it is important to: make your own choice about what you do within the suggested range; know that you have the flexibility to adapt a suggested activity to meet the needs of your students; make the plan specifically focus on development; concentrate on a small number of actions (3 is good); shrink overblown plans to keep the change manageable.
You might also think about what you are going to do less of in order to accommodate the changes.
The plan represents a promise to yourself and your colleagues to do something. This promise should help keep the plan as a priority in your mind.
What’s my enquiry going to be about?
Think about what you are trying to achieve
Now that you have looked through the ideas you might use its time to decide what to do and more importantly why.Rather than simply deciding to introduce something new into the classroom because it sounds interesting, you will get more value out of giving the plan a specific focus by creating a question.
Why a question? Because this is an enquiry, you want to find out if something will change (pupil behaviour) when you change something specific.
Think through questions like:
- Where are your students now in their development of the learning behaviour? ( ie results from Activity stuck)
- How you would like your students to be different?
- What aspects of your learning culture need to be improved/changed?
- Which of the practical ideas for doing something different seem most appropriate?
- How you want your pupils to improve/develop/enhance in …………?.
Think of it like this:
If I do X will it improve/develop/enhance Y?
This is the crunch question. Students are unlikely to change unless your behaviour changes!
Visualise how you want your students to be and then think about what you might do, or say, or model, or celebrate, or whatever…. differently to bring about this change in students.
You could think of this as If/ THEN statements.
- If I create stuck prompts with my class, then will their reliance on me be reduced?
- If I allow pupils to ask only one question of me in any lesson, then will their willingness to seek answers for themselves improve?
- If I insist that I expect students to get stuck at least twice in the lesson, then will students realise the positive value of being stuck?
- If I re-frame stuck as an interesting stage in learning, then will their fearfulness diminish or disappear?
This format might help you to capture your learning enquiry question
Write your enquiry question in your learning notepad
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