Teacher Talk - Book Reviews
As part of my ProD this year I joined a book club at my school. I loved this idea, and was excited for the opportunity to share new ideas with colleges. We had several choices of books. My first was called "Dive into Inquiry" by Trevor MacKenzie. The second was "Rethinking Letter Grades" by Caren Cameron and Kathleen Gregory. Both were topics I was interested in, but I must admit I focused a lot more energy on 'Dive into Inquiry.'
I have been interested in the concept of inquiry based learning since the early in my teacher education. I loved the idea of students following their passions and using class time to explore something they love and get credit for it. I had grand plans of inquiry projects in my practicums, but when I was faced with the actual execution, my attempts fell utterly short. So, for the time being, I abandoned the idea as beyond my abilities.
When the new curriculum started rolling out in my district the idea of inquiry came back to me. I thought there was so much potential to develop classes around the inquiry model. I tried it again when I was teaching Planning 10, but unfortunately it didn't quite go the way I had hoped. I put it aside again. For the next few years I was not in teaching positions that were really conducive to introducing inquiry. Then, this book club came up, and one of the first books on the list was "Dive into Inquiry" and I thought 'maybe I this will give me a better idea of how this works.'
My thoughts:
This book was really a great read. There was a lot of information and detail, and really clear step by step instructions on how to build an inquiry based classroom. There was also a lot of extra resources and concrete examples included that you could explore at your own leisure in the form of QR codes which I found interesting.
The one criticism I might have is that there was a large amount of detail that was not really necessary for understanding, but more used as padding. Although this did not take away from the overall experience of the book, it did create a bit of a need to sift through story to get to information. The one other thing I might comment on is the fact that the structure makes the assumption that the students will all 'buy into' this inquiry model. Although the idea of buy-in is addressed, there is no mention of what might happen if there are a few students who do not buy into the concept.
I really appreciated the emphasis Mackenzie put on building relationships with your students right at the beginning. That developing a classroom where students feel safe and free to express ideas, opinions, and questions openly is key to the success of an inquiry based classroom.
Over all we had three sessions of the book club. The intent was to have a few more, and spread out through the year, but unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances, we had to condense our meetings. I found that the discussions that came out of these meetings were positive (even when the opinions of the books were not), engaging, and inspiring. They really gave me a snapshot of the depth of knowledge and innovation that is present in my colleges. Bellow are their thoughts on all of the books we read for the club.
My colleagues thoughts:
I have been interested in the concept of inquiry based learning since the early in my teacher education. I loved the idea of students following their passions and using class time to explore something they love and get credit for it. I had grand plans of inquiry projects in my practicums, but when I was faced with the actual execution, my attempts fell utterly short. So, for the time being, I abandoned the idea as beyond my abilities.
When the new curriculum started rolling out in my district the idea of inquiry came back to me. I thought there was so much potential to develop classes around the inquiry model. I tried it again when I was teaching Planning 10, but unfortunately it didn't quite go the way I had hoped. I put it aside again. For the next few years I was not in teaching positions that were really conducive to introducing inquiry. Then, this book club came up, and one of the first books on the list was "Dive into Inquiry" and I thought 'maybe I this will give me a better idea of how this works.'
My thoughts:
This book was really a great read. There was a lot of information and detail, and really clear step by step instructions on how to build an inquiry based classroom. There was also a lot of extra resources and concrete examples included that you could explore at your own leisure in the form of QR codes which I found interesting.
The one criticism I might have is that there was a large amount of detail that was not really necessary for understanding, but more used as padding. Although this did not take away from the overall experience of the book, it did create a bit of a need to sift through story to get to information. The one other thing I might comment on is the fact that the structure makes the assumption that the students will all 'buy into' this inquiry model. Although the idea of buy-in is addressed, there is no mention of what might happen if there are a few students who do not buy into the concept.
I really appreciated the emphasis Mackenzie put on building relationships with your students right at the beginning. That developing a classroom where students feel safe and free to express ideas, opinions, and questions openly is key to the success of an inquiry based classroom.
Over all we had three sessions of the book club. The intent was to have a few more, and spread out through the year, but unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances, we had to condense our meetings. I found that the discussions that came out of these meetings were positive (even when the opinions of the books were not), engaging, and inspiring. They really gave me a snapshot of the depth of knowledge and innovation that is present in my colleges. Bellow are their thoughts on all of the books we read for the club.
My colleagues thoughts:
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