It makes you think...

Today, I observed my associate teacher conducting an activity called “Community of Inquiry.” This is where the whole class is in a circle and discuss particular topics. There is a set of rules of how to contribute ideas. Today was the topic of whether magic existed. It was first introduced from the book “Where the wild things roam” (I think that was the title, which is a ubiquitous book in New Zealand classrooms). Children could raise their ideas and give arguments for and against. The teacher is more or less a prompter rather than a contributor, in that if the discussion is getting weighed to one side, she would ask a question that could trigger differing opinion and explore other aspects of the topic.

Interestingly, the most vociferous contributors believed strongly in magic. Their arguments at first appealed to the story as a reference, “…if there was no magic, then how did trees grow in his room?” Once debate on the credibility of fiction frothed from the other side, discussion went rather metaphysical such as “if there was no magic, how was the world created?” and this lead to questions of god(s). A couple of students asserted that they didn’t believe in gods. One student (a usually problematic child) said that there is so much magic in the world making everything work. The teacher nearer the end of the session checked whether anyone who hadn’t contributed had any thoughts they wanted to contribute. The previous week they had apparently discussed “dreams.”

For me, it was a revelation, because I had planned to generate a forum atmosphere at the start of the day when I finally have a class of my own. I was going to be completely experimental (which is always my compulsion) rather than do a thorough search of the existing techniques.

Originally I had intended to get them to discuss in small groups before contributing as a class. This means that all students had the opportunity to bounce their thoughts around as well as quickly find what objections there are to their thoughts.

I hadn’t considered what I know is a crucial part of the teaching process, motivation. The technique mentioned above uses a storybook to establish the meaning of the discussion. I was naively planning just to be the teacher setting the topic of discussion, which thinking about it now is very simplistic. Probably another advantage of their scheme is that the topic was more accessible to them, whereas I had lofty ideals of discussing responsibility, values and truth etc. as concept topics.

I already had the idea of having special rules for contribution (a la co-operative teaching), which is a common element between my intended model and that I saw in class today. The technique I observed apparently is based on a book, which I now want to have dearly!