The Spiral of inquiry six steps that allow us to know how to work with our students.
Scan: What is going on for our learners? how are they feeling, what in their environment might effect their ability to learn today? Is it a lovely day outside? Are they all sunburnt from gym? Is it the day before a long weekend? Checking the mood of your classroom will better prepare you for how a classroom will go and how they will do their work. I had a week where many of my students come in from gym in their previous block sunburnt and over heated and I had to get them to lay on the ground and cool off. A student going through that is not in a position with learn. I interoperate scanning as putting your ego aside to insure your students will be receptive to your learning.
Focus: What will have the biggest impact. On average people have an attention span of their age in minutes plus 2. So a 14 year old can give you on average 16 minutes of attention, now you can see this as you only 16 minutes or you can create a lesson that can be delivered in 16 minutes. Is it important to deliver a 100 page slide that causes the brains of your students to become static. It is more important to present students with information as soon as possible so they can mull over and digest the information.
Develop a Hunch: What is leading to this situation? How are we contributing to it? I am not certain how much you should twist yourself into knots trying to understand the inner workings of 30 students in a given day. I found making your class an environment that is calm and safe allows students to just relax. I have the fortune of being a calming presence in most rooms I am in, I found keeping an eye on my students and nipping problems in the bud was better to keep a calm classroom.
Learn: What do we need to learn? How will we learn this? This is the nitty gritty of teaching, how do you put the information we have into our students heads and make sure some of it sticks. I found project based learning the best because I always preferred it to lectures. There is a place for lectures but if you want to make sure your students are engaged in it then you should at least make it interactive. I had it so they had to answer a question using their phone and when they found the answer they got a jolly rancher.
Take action : What can we do to make a meaningful difference? I think this feels a little too egotistical. “a meaningful difference” was never my goal when I taught, I am not entering this feel thinking I will change lives in any meaningful way. If you are going into teaching to fulfil some savior complex, or believe that you have information that only you can impart then you are kidding yourself. I live my life by the simple philosophy of being a calm, happy person. People seem to gravitate to that and they are welcome to feel safe and relaxed around me but I am not living my life thinking I will make a meaningful difference.
Check: Have we made enough of a difference? How do we know? I don’t think we will ever know. Human beings don’t have a progress metre that shows how much or how little of a difference we make. All forms of assessment have their flaws because you can always have a students who just writes what they think you want. I believe you can just understand if a person grasps the information you gave them of if they were just parroting what you gave them.