June 2025: Matariki Ideas and What is Inquiry?

 I've recently been made redundant and have a little spare time on my hands so decided I would restart the blog. Some of you may know me for my passion for inquiry-based learning or from my work supporting gifted and talented learners. I fully believe that inquiry-based learning is beneficial for all learners but especially so for gifted students who thrive on this open-ended curiosity-based approach. As Socrates reportedly said "Wisdom begins with wonder".

So, this blog will in some ways be similar to the newsletter I was posting to the Gifted and Talented mailing list but I am no longer linked to the MoE who paid me to look after that list. This gives me a little more freedom in what I post. So here we go.

Please follow me on Bluesky or join my FB group to be updated when I post and share with your colleagues. I'd love to hear in the comments if you think this is something you'll find valuable.

What's up this month?

Matariki

In Aotearoa New Zealand the Matariki holiday is on the closest Friday to the Tangaroa lunar period during the lunar month of Piripi, the first month in the Maramataka (Māori lunar calendar). In 2025 The Tangaroa lunar period falls between the 19th and 22nd of June so the public holiday is on June 20th.

Ideas

Note, these are starting points and hopefully will provoke curiosity and inquiry. Follow the lead of students and encourage them to ask questions. Post in the comments any ideas you have used with students.

• Explore what Matariki celebrations look like in different areas of Aotearoa New Zealand.
• Some iwi do not use the rising of Matariki as the start of the new lunar year. Explore why this is and the alternatives used. 
• How does Māori understanding of Matariki differ from Western understanding of the Pleiades?
• The Matariki constellation goes by many names in different countries and cultures.  Explore the traditions surrounding this constellation and dig into reasons for similarities and differences.
• Explore maramataka including its use in guiding planting, harvesting etc of crops. Explore how other cultures use lunar calendars and constellations in similar ways.
• Explore ways that Scratch or other coding platforms can be used by students to share their findings in the form of interactive games/activities. This is a simple example.
• Students could use Google sites or another web platform to share their findings.

Resources

• Kauwhata Reo MoE resources

• Education Gazette article (2023)

• Matariki Rauemi Resources

Te Wānanga o Aotearoa Matariki resources

• Te Papa resources

• Science Learning Hub

• Matariki in the ancient world (check out their other Matariki resources as well).
  
  

Kōtui Ako VLN

Registrations for Kōtui Ako VLN semester 2 are now open (close June 18th).

Competitions and events

These can often be a motivator or an inquiry prompt. 
Note: some may have entry fees. Inclusion in this list is not an endorsement unless otherwise stated.
Please comment on your experience with these comps/events. 

• NZ Writers' College list of competitions
• Tournament of the Minds - entries close June 25th
• Graphic design competitions
• Future problem solving NZ - a lot of these have already started but some are available and there is a list of topics that could provide inspiration
• Dance NZ Made
• NZ Engineering Science Team Competition aimed at years 12 & 13. Entries open June 1st and close on July 25th. Competition August 2nd.
• Day One film challenge (previously Someday challenge) - for anyone under the age of 25 to make a short film about an issue they care about. Round 2 submission date 28th July.
• Play it Strange - songwriting (and performing) competition.
• NZ Chemistry Olympiad

Topic of the month

This section I will use to comment on an area of interest to me. If there is something you would like me to explore pop it in the comments. This month I briefly explore what inquiry-based learning is.

​Inquiry-based learning is a constructivist approach, in which students have ownership of their learning. It starts with exploration and questioning and leads to investigation into a worthy question, issue, problem or idea.
It involves asking questions, gathering and analysing information, generating solutions, making decisions, justifying conclusions and taking action.
(Based on definitions from Sharon Friesen and the Galileo Educational Network).

Inquiry is a disposition, not a process. One of our jobs as a teacher is to nurture and develop that disposition. I explore this further in this blogpost.
When using an inquiry approach to teaching and learning we guide learning. This involves making sure students have the skills and knowledge to be able to pose and research questions of all levels from low level to deep and rich.
If you need help on some of the skills learners need you can get free copies of my Information literacy skills stages 1- 3 (NZ curric. stage 1) and 2 - 4 (NZ curric. stages 2 - 3). I'll talk more about this in future posts.

Recommended resources

Inquiring Mind site - my own website - a few things need updating, I'm currently working on it but still has loads of info and resources.
My inquiring mind Fb group
Gifted & Talented Teachers Fb group
Pito Mata a suite of early learning resources to support kaiako of gifted learners. Aimed at ECE but has plenty that will be of interest to teachers of older ākonga, especially if you are teaching juniors.
Mānawatia te iho pūmanawa - tool to support kaiako in working in a holistic way with gifted tamariki.
Neurodiversity in NZ education
Mindplus
Education Hub
NZAGC
Pūtātara - NZ MoE site - supports schools and teachers to develop learning opportunities that are place-based, inquiry-led, and focused on participation for change.
About me and my online platforms (some are in the process of being updated now I have some spare time).

I'd love to hear from you with comments about anything related to inquiry-based learning or supporting gifted and talented learners and/or suggestions for things to include in this blog/newsletter.

N.B. I may sometimes use affiliate links but only where I genuinely believe the website or product is worthy of support.

Ask Don't Tell.

I hear a lot of questions from teachers about how they can develop learner agency and also how to foster an inquiry disposition in students. On the flipside, and surprisingly sometimes from the same teachers, I hear questions along the lines of:
What should I call my reading groups?
Our big topic next term is change. What should I do around this?
We're doing inquiry next term, what are some topic ideas?

I find myself saying 3 words: "Ask the kids." and those who know me won't be surprised to hear that this is quickly followed (or sometimes preceded) by "What's your purpose?"

Before going further I'd like to say something about the teachers who are asking questions such as these. These teachers are learners (as are we all), they are asking questions that show they have a need to further develop their skills and understandings around learner agency and student inquiry and we should be supporting them on that journey.

Now let's look at those examples:

What should I call my reading groups?
Why are you giving them a name? How about supporting them to come up with something meaningful to them? How about having them get together and negotiate a name for themselves? Sure it will take a bit more class time but isn't 'Managing Self' a Key Competency you are trying to develop? Aren't things like being able to negotiate, make decisions and compromise, important skills that are best learned in authentic contexts? We won't develop agentic learners if we make all the decisions for them.



Our big topic next term is change. What should I do around this?
What's your purpose for having them learn about change?  Which aspect (s) of change are you wanting them to learn about? E.g. 'Change can be permanent or temporary' is quite different to 'living things change over time' or "coping with changes in our lives', 'changes to the environment can be be caused by inanimate things like wind and water or animate things like people, plants and animals' or 'we can change our minds based on new evidence'.  Does it matter what the context is so long as it meets the purpose? Why not share that purpose with them and ask them for some contexts that have meaning and relevance to them? How about giving them some provocations to stimulate their curiosity and seeing what questions arise?

We're doing inquiry next term, what are some topic ideas?
First up, you don't "do" inquiry. You use an inquiry approach or you inquire into a question, problem etc. I'd be asking what the purpose of the inquiry was? Once that is clear, Iook for some authentic contexts that you know are relevant to your learners. You could share some provocations to stimulate questions, then follow their lead into areas that meet the purpose but are relevant to them. Or straight out share the purpose with them and ask them to suggest some contexts.

So next time a teacher asks what they should name their maths group or what their inquiry topic should be, let's not jump in with an answer but instead support them to grow in their understanding of developing agentic learners with inquiring dispositions.

I'll just finish with this great sketchnote from the marvellous @sylviaduckworth.

Education for the Future

Thanks to Leigh Hyne's recent blog post  I viewed the video of an interview with the OECD’s Director for Education and Skills Andreas Schleicher. The video is an hour long but worth watching as there are many interesting points raised that are relevant to New Zealand (and indeed worldwide) education.



Schleicher was asked (35:39) what was the most important thing a teacher could do to prepare students for their future?  His reply was to stop thinking about preparing students for jobs, jobs will look totally different in the future. In science, for example, we spend too much time on teaching content and too little time teaching students to design experiments and think like a scientist.

This fits really well with my views around the need for an inquiry approach and the use of authentic contexts for learning. Students need to do the work that would be done by those working in the discipline in the community, in science they need to do what scientists do, in art they need to do what artists do.

Schleicher went on to say that coding, for example, will look totally different when younger students leave school. This fits with my view that the coding itself is not the important part. The problem-solving and computational thinking will still be relevant, the ability to think logically, to break tasks down into parts and see patterns, to design solutions, to de-bug when things don't work and to re-design, these skills will still be useful and valuable. This is especially important to keep in mind as we consider the draft of the new Digital technologies area of the curriculum.

Schleicher believes that education systems need to have core values and everything that is in or added to the curriculum needs to be examined against those core values. This works at both a government level and an individual school level.

Schools in New Zealand have to develop their own school curriculum and their core values need to be a the heart of this. This is not always the case. Most schools have worked on developing these sets of core values as part of developing their vision and mission statements but there are still some that have not applied these when developing their school curriculum. Schools that have done this well, Te Kowhai Primary for example, have seen the benefits for their students

Schleicher also talked about early childhood education (49:34) and how formalisation of learning is doing more harm than good and that we need to let children play and socialise,  which proponents of play-based learning would be heartened to hear.

It was interesting to hear the question (51:47) from Mark Treadwell, a New Zealand educator, on how we overcome the lack of understanding around what is the difference between knowledge, an idea, a concept and a concept framework. There is a definite need to develop common understandings around what these terms mean as it impacts on both curriculum design and implementation.

Schleicher emphasised that we need to teach fewer things at greater depth, to get to the root of the discipline, to foster students' talents. Japan, for example took 30% of material out of their curriculum and it resulted in an increase in creative skills and creative problem solving. He  remarked on the tendency of schools to prioritise the urgent over the important. Just having more learning time does not equate to better outcomes (Pisa data shows a negative correlation).  He asserts that we need to help students find their passions, what they are good at, what is going to serve a social purpose.

Inquiry in the Real World

I was inspired to write this post after reading the article "What Does Inquiry Look Like?" written by Stephanie on her Teaching the Teacher Blog. I totally agree with her premise that inquiry is by no means linear and i like the analogy to a painter's palette where you dip in and out of stages using the colours you want when you need them and maybe even ignoring some colours altogether. I also like her representation of inquiry in the real world as a Jackson Pollock Painting. 

I think however that she has missed an important point. I believe the key lies in knowing the purpose of the inquiry and that should be the guide. As I wrote in my post Play, Passion and Purpose, the purpose of the inquiry needs to be very clear to both teacher and students right from the start. When I see inquiries that have gone off the rails it is most often because the purpose was unclear or sometimes not known at all.

If the purpose is the focus, then the inquiry simply proceeds to achieve that purpose dipping in and out of stages as the need arises and always checking in to see what else is needed to achieve that purpose. The more authentic this inquiry is and the more relevant it is to the students, the easier this will be. 

In this inquiry, for example, the students in Fraser Quinn's class at Putaruru Primary wanted to make a ki-o-rahi field and set about doing just that. The students led the process under the guidance of their teacher and the purpose guided the inquiry from start to finish. This is what inquiry in the real world looks like.

The Un-integrated Curriculum

Just read a blog post about a school district in Maryland that is using subject-specific teachers in primary schools. All sort of alarm bells went off for me and the more I read the louder they rang. 

The superintendent reports less stress for teachers. Apparently this was because it reduced teacher workload as they were now planning only two lessons a day instead of five. So much for personalisation of learning, apparently you can take the same lesson and teach it to several different classes without needing to make any changes to meet the needs of the learners in those classes.

Now I can see how using teachers with specific subject area strengths for some sessions could work but I would see this happening on a needs basis. Students would be working on their inquiries and experts in areas of need could be brought in to provide specific, targeted help. Or in a modern learning environment where classes have more than one teacher there could be some specialisation, again based on student need.

Putting subjects into silos in primary school is a backward step in my opinion, I would like to see more curriculum integration, not less.  I believe in curriculum integration where inquiries naturally take in a number of curriculum areas and subject specialisation makes this difficult to happen. In fact it is one of the reasons a lot of high schools struggle with student inquiry. I am not saying it can't happen, there some high schools doing a wonderful job with this, but a lot of planning and collaboration between teachers is needed to make it successful. 

“The values, competencies, knowledge and skills that students need for addressing real-life situations are rarely confined to one part of the curriculum. Wherever possible schools should aim to design their curriculum so that learning crosses apparent boundaries.” 

(N.Z. Curriculum p. 38)

Play, Passion and Purpose

Play, Passion and Purpose

Tony Wagner's video on creating innovators looks at 5 key factors in creating innovators. These include and my personal favourite: Play, Passion and Purpose. We need to give students time to play and explore the world around them, with guidance so they can get the most from their experiences. We need to encourage play and passion in ways like Stonefields School is doing in their Break Through time, and companies like Google do with their 20% time or Genius Time. 

We need to value creativity, innovation, problem-solving and iteration. As Wagner says it is not what students know that matters, " What the world cares about is what they can do with what they know." So what is it that we assess and therefore show we value? Edutopia describes some ideas on Building Creative Confidence.

One of the questions I find myself asking teachers most often is "What is the purpose of this lesson/activity/inquiry...?" Sometimes teachers find this easy to answer, others struggle, eventually giving answers like "It is in the test", "We have always done this" or "I was told to".

The purpose of everything we do in the classroom needs to be really clear to both us and our students. If we are clear on the purpose it will make choices surrounding the lesson/activity/inquiry much clearer for the teacher and the student. The purpose of the inquiry will provide clear guidance on what we do as a result of an activity or inquiry. Which also means that often we may not know at the start of an inquiry exactly what we will do as a result as our findings and our purpose will guide that action.

LATS 2011 Questioning

Learning at Schools 2011 Questioning
Trevor Bond

This was an excellent session, very thought-provoking and informative. I created a Google Doc of my notes which can be accessed here: http://tinyurl.com/BondQuestioning

I lked the levels of questioning which provided a scaffold for both the teaching and assessing of questioning skills. One very good point that he made was the importance of modelling, that by asking and answering poor questions we reinforce them. He has also developed a rubric to aid this assessment. http://question-skills.wikispaces.com/The+QuESTioning+Rubric

Another valuable point he made was the importance of both open and closed questions. There has been a tendency by some to negate the importance of closed questions when in fact they can be very valuable. They can save us a lot of work for example by eliminating some options. Many of the subsidiary questions for inquiry are closed questions and are needed to answer the Key question.

The other main point I agreed with was that inquiry does not always have to involve huge, rich, fertile questions. Yes these are great and once or twice a year a rich inquiry is extremely valuable, but there is a place for many smaller authentic inquiries. An example might be "How can we keep our cloakbay tidy? This might only last a few hours but could something that is really relevant to students and result in a large number of inquiry skills being developed.

Trevor has developed a questioning wiki http://ictnz.com/Questioning.htm which is well worth a look.
Learning at Schools 2011 Trevor Bond - Good Inquiry Good Learning 
My notes can be viewed in a Google Doc http://tinyurl.com/BondGoodInquiryGoodLearning

Trevor made a very good distinction between Celebration of the Found - celebrating what students found out abut the topic and Celebration of the Understood - celebrating what students did with the info http://ictnz.com/Inquiry%20Learning/good%20inquiry%20learning.htm#celebrationoffound These two concepts were coined by Dr Ross Todd

LearningatSchools 2011 Day One Keynote

The first keynote by Scott McLeod I found interesting. The messages he was giving were good ones:
He talked about Disruptive Innovations http://www.claytonchristensen.com/disruptive_innovation.html and how we need to move forward. Most of the presentation could be summed up in the David Warlick quote

“No generation in history has been so thoroughly prepared for the industrial age.”

However I had a certain sense of deja vu. I have been hearing these same messages for the last 6 years if not longer at these conferences. Why are we needing to hear them again and again? Do schools not already have this message?

It is my belief that primary schools at least have got this message loud and clear and most teachers have made the pedagogical shift or at least are well on the way. What many are lacking however is the skills, strategies and confidence to implement this in the classroom.

Moving to a more student-focussed rather than teacher-centred approach is scary for many. It involves relinquishing some control and many find this hard. They need a lot of support as they embark on this journey. Instead of focussing on what we are doing wrong, how about a focus on how we can move forward, what actually needs to happen in the classroon on Monday morning.