Read all about inquiry through the lens of one of the world's leading experts in the area.
Watch this webinar with the good folks at Classroom 2.0 LIVE all about Dive into Inquiry and how we can intentionally support our students in a more personalized learning environment. And check out the amazing curation of resources connected to my work they put together. Wow!
We don't throw the baby out with the bathwater my friends. We mindfully strike a balance of control over learning with our students at the heart of the decisions we make.
Sometimes the most magical learning and authentic friendships can appear out of a single tweet. In fact, you’d be surprised how often this tends to happen. A few retweets between likeminded educators, add in a couple comments on one another’s tweets, sprinkle in a couple of DMs, and POOF, an inspiring partnership is planned!
Case in point my experience with Matt Silverman, Assistant Superitnedent for Curriculum of Glenview D34 in Illinois just north of Chicago.
Our interactions on twitter led to us planning a day of learning with teachers, librarians, instructional coaches, and administrators from his district. From the moment I stepped out of my Uber in the parking lot to the post-learning social he planned for attendees I was greeted with unparalleled kindness. The energy from the group was a joy to witness as we unpacked inquiry together.
Thank you to Matt, Adrienne, Sam, and Barrie (and everyone for that matter!) for welcoming into your district and treating me like family. Your kindness will not be forgotten!
Find them at #WeAreD34
Watch this Flipgrid webinar as Rebecca Bathurst-Hunt and I share how Flipgrid, our favourite addition to our teaching in recent memory, empowers our students and helps foster an inquiry mindset.
Have a read of our recent MindShift guest post where we share the power of inquiry and personalized learning.
"When I (Trevor) first adopted an inquiry approach in my classroom, I discovered that when students explore a topic they are truly passionate about, amazing things happen: engagement increases, attendance and work ethic improve, twenty-first-century skills are acquired, classroom energy and collaboration are fostered, and my assessment of student understanding becomes more clear and accurate.
One early experience with a student in inquiry convinced me I was on to something. His name was Chris."
I was thrilled to be a guest on Vicki Davis's (aka The CoolCat Teacher) podcast to share 5 ways to bring the inquiry mindset to your classroom. It's a high energy and fast paced show where our love for teaching shines through - big time!
Here are the 5 big ideas from the podcast:
Idea #1 Ask students what their curiosities and interests and passions are
Idea #2 Bring in provocations
Idea #4: Model your own passions, interests, and curiosities
Idea #4: Bring in a real world problem or challenge
Idea #5: Use the power of the PLN
Recently I provided the mic drop closing message to Flipgrid’s 1st annual Short Shorts Film Festival, a Facebook LIVE event that featured inspiring video from 10 edu rockstars! The series of short yet incredibly powerful ignite-style keynotes was a highlight for me!
Check my video below, the entire series here and each individual mic drop here.
Huge shout out to Adam Short Shorts and the Flipgrid crew for putting on this amazing event!
And to all the other speakers, a huge thank you: Kathi, Bonnie, Martin, Priscilla, Amy, Natasha, Todd, Kim, Michael, and Karie
In this EdTechTeam webinar Rebecca Bathurst-Hunt and I share some insight into inquiry with our littles and what personalized learning looks like with our youngest students. We share some ideas fro Inquiry Mindset and some of our most loved annecdotes from our classroom. Enjoy!
Thankful to Barbara Bray for sharing her excitement for Inquiry Mindset in this awesome recap and review that was published prior to the book coming to print. See below and hit the jumpy to read on:
"I was fortunate to have received a draft of Inquiry Mindset written by Trevor MacKenzie with kindergarten teacher Rebecca Bathurst-Hunt. I will be sharing more about Trevor when I get to post the conversation I had with him for my podcast series, but I wanted to get a book review out first since it will be released soon. This is a powerful book, and I’m excited for educators to be able to get their hands on a copy March 1st.
Inquiry Mindset expands on Trevor’s first book, Dive into Inquiry: Amplify Learning and Empower Student Voice, with another powerful argument for inquiry-based learning by challenging educators to stoke students’ curiosities, hear their voices, and nurture their hearts. Inquiry Mindset begins with a personal story about Trevor’s son, Ewan, to bring you right in to grab your heartstrings about why we need inquiry. This book provides practical advice, examples, strategies, and resources for teachers so they can meet those challenges for their own professional learning. Inquiry Mindset takes readers on their own personal journeys to discover how they can become inquiry teachers."
Gone are the days of a shhh, quiet and isolating learning spaces. Whether we are referring to our classrooms, our learning commons or our small group work rooms, we believe that our learning spaces need to be designed with inquiry in mind. We elaborate on this belief throughout Chapter 8 in Inquiry Mindset, Rebecca Bathurst-Hunt and I speak to the idea of shifting our traditional learning spaces towards becoming more collaborative learning environments that are designed with intention and flexibility to support our learners working in inquiry.
The design of our space is crucial to creating a culture of inquiry. We spend time demonstrating and explicitly teaching our learners the benefit and purpose of each step. We model how to use various tools and spaces in our room to be successful and feel supported in our learning environments. We are inspired by David Thornburg’s work and his book Campfires in Cyberspace. Thornburg proposes learning spaces that empower our learners with choice and flexible seating to best meet their needs and allow them to learn in a way that supports them. We feel these spaces lend well to creating an empowered inquiry space. The Cave, the Watering hole, the Campfire and Life are four spaces that resonate with us and inspired us to write about in Inquiry Mindset.
Here is a sketchnote and brief explanation of each space. For more details please see Chapter 8 of Inquiry Mindset.
Rebecca and I are eager to implement these four learning spaces with our learners this upcoming school year. We will be introducing the learning spaces using this sketchnote. In addition, we have designed individual visuals for each space. We believe that the individual visuals support the explicit teaching and modelling of how and when to appropriately choose a space. We propose using the visuals around your room and perhaps on your front board to give space choices during specific learning blocks.
If you are feeling just as excited as we are about creating an Empowered Inquiry Space, check out our Exclusive Content to download the visuals and use them in your learning environment.
We are sure you will have many more ideas and ways to use these visuals and we can’t wait to see what you do with them. Remember, in inquiry we are more powerful together, please do share to our online community how you use this resource in your classroom using our #InquiryMindset tag.
