Thought of the Day: August 16th, 2013

The Power of Inquiry in Our Learning Journeys

I recently had the very fortunate experience of going to India to lead a workshop in inquiry and assessment in PE. As I planned for this workshop, I emailed someone that I have a lot of respect for whose work I follow with regularity, Edna Sackson. Edna is the founder of a great website called 'Inquire Within' that can be found here. If you are not following Edna on Twitter, I recommend that you do. She can be found at https://twitter.com/whatedsaid.

I asked Edna if she had any suggested readings on inquiry that I could potentially use as resources during my workshop. She got back to me with a link to a 7-minute animation called 'The Potter'. Edna highly recommended the video as it is an excellent resource that really sums up the power of inquiry within our teaching practice. Many PYP classroom teachers have probably already seen this video, but I am not so sure about PE specialists. 

As you watch 'The Potter', I would like you to reflect on a few questions:

How does the student learn in the video?
What feelings does the student experience throughout the learning process?
What role does the teacher play?
What core concepts and big ideas about inquiry can be extracted from 'The Potter' and applied to the learning experiences that we offer our students in PE?

I think that this video is quite powerful in capturing the real essence of inquiry and sums up the fact that there is indeed an important process that should take place during a student's learning journey. Although this is an animation and is in no way related to PE itself, the greater message to me connects to an important question that I will leave you with.

How can we as PE teachers better help our students to become more intrinsically motivated during their learning journeys?

To see a great blog post on 'The Potter' please visit this link. I'd be happy to hear your stories on the role that inquiry plays within your PE programs. Thanks.