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.

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.

Olympics - why, why, why?

I was discussing the Olympics with some colleagues today, or more specifically I was discussing how important it is to know why you are asking students to complete a particular activity. I've talked about being clear about your purpose before in my posts Play, Passion and Purpose and again in UDL and Task Design.

What I hear a lot of is "That's a cool activity, I'll try that with my kids tomorrow" or "That's going to look great on the classroom wall and the kids will really enjoy doing it" or similar types of thinking. Topics like the Olympics, ANZAC Day, Easter and Christmas seem especially prone to this.

The very first question that needs to be asked about anything you are doing with students is "Why are you doing it?". The "why" helps us make decisions around other questions lile "How important is this?" "Is this activity the best use of valuable class time?" and "Is this the best activity for the purpose?".

Let's look at the example of Olympic artwork - just because this will look lovely on your wall is not a good reason to spend class time on it. Why are you doing it.? Ok, it might be developing some new art techniques (or it might not) but often that is not why teachers are choosing to do it. Surely art should have meaning and a purpose beyond pure decoration.

What if we used that time to look at something like the 'Olympic spirit and what it means to us' or 'How the Olympics have changed over time and whether it is for the better' or 'Should we still have the Olympics?' for example. What if we looked at how we could portray our thoughts on these matters using art? What if we looked at some examples of Olympic artworks and asked what the artist was trying to convey through their artwork? Or looked at how portrayal of the Olympics in art has changed over time and discussed why that might be? What if we then looked at the techniques etc that the artist used to get across that message? Wouldn't that lead to some artwork that we could proudly display on our classroom walls while being a meaningful use of precious class time?

Thanks @lynnesilcock for the inspiration for this post.

"Those who cannot remember the past..."

It's that time again, Connected Educator Month (get the starter kit) and I've joined the blogging challenge.  My first challenge is to reflect on how my teaching practice has evolved over time. As I am no longer a classroom teacher I have taken the opportunity to reflect on my first year of teaching and compare aspects of that to today's classrooms.

When I reflect back on my first year of teaching over 30 years ago there were a lot of ideas that were similar to those around now but have evolved. My first year was in what was then called an open plan classroom, which very superficially resembled today's Modern Learning Environments (MLEs). Two classrooms had a wall removed to turn them into one large space and two single cell classrooms were also part of the set up. 

Students were all brought together in the open space between two classrooms for introductions to units or any time we were wanting to deliver content or messages to the whole syndicate at once. This usually meant one or more teachers could be released to do other things like admin tasks or individual testing (although there wasn't much of the latter happening). 

The syndicate was comprised of what would now be called year 3 and 4 students and we cross-grouped for maths. This was partially on ability and partially on year level so there were two year 3 classes and two year 4 classes. This was the most restrictive subject as we taught from a text book (Modern School Mathematics), a double page a day. There was a teachers book which we used to introduce the day's topic then the students completed the exercises from their text book. The next day we moved on to the next pages whether they understood it or not. When I questioned this I was told there was a spiral curriculum and the subject would come round again. What they didn't seem to take into account was that when it came round it was a higher level, if they didn't get it the first time it was going to be harder to get the next time. 

For reading the students were ability grouped, and then within each class we grouped again. We used the School Journals and the old Ready to Read series of readers - Hungry Lambs, Boat Day, Sweet Porridge etc. and the NZEI book which supported these with  the sight words, blends and comprehension questions relevant to each story. We didn't teach strategies like cross-checking cues or reading-on.  We used a round robin approach with each child reading aloud a part of the book while the others in the group supposedly followed reading silently. I ran a reading task board which was like a reading tumble and did at least try to have activities with some relevance to the learning. 

In the afternoon the classes revolved around teachers with each of the four teachers specialising in an area - PE, Music, Art or Drama. We taught the same lesson 4 times to different classes for all these subjects. This certainly saved on planning time but there wasn't a lot of (or in most cases, any) adaptation for individual classes or students.  

Learning in Social Studies and Science was topic-based and thematic rather than cross-curricula. If the topic was Spring then we drew blossoms and glued cotton-wool on lambs, we sung Spring songs and read Spring poems. We counted daffodils and learnt about baby animals. We crowbarred Spring into every aspect of the curriculum. We had little idea of why we did most of these things, they certainly had little or nothing to do with the objectives of the unit. We cooperatively planned and then each teacher would teach a different aspect. So again the same lesson repeated 4 times with little or no adaptation. 

Back then I was already using a constructivist inquiry approach to Science which was the subject area I got to teach. Prior knowledge was determined and student questions were collected. We would hypothesise and test our hypotheses, then analyse our information and form conclusions. At times we even tried to find authentic contexts and help students see the relevance to their lives. It wasn't inquiry as I would see it today but it was a good start. What we failed to do however was the 'what next' step, the action as a result of the inquiry. Instead we would give them a test to see what they understood and move on to the next topic.

So how does all this relate to teaching today? Well our open-plan classrooms were not a success, they were very noisy, there were no breakout spaces and learner agency was almost non-existent. We talked about being student-centered but did very little to walk the talk. There was certainly no personalisation of learning going on, teachers, not students, had control of all aspects of the learning. Cultural responsiveness was virtually unheard of, other than a token Māori Culture group which was brought out on special occasions to perform waiata-ā-ringa and haka. The whole thing seemed designed to make it easier for the teachers, not to benefit the students. It wasn't long before the walls were going up again. 

Unfortunately I see the same mistakes being repeated in some (please note that it is only some) schools who are trying out the so-called MLEs.  Walls are knocked down, new furniture (dare I say bean bags) is purchased and classes are thrown in together with little thought as to why they are doing it, and even less into thinking about the changes in practice that are needed to make this work.I see teacher-decided cross-grouping happening in some of these MLEs rather than flexible skill and strategy-based grouping tailored to the students needs.

I still see thematic units happening in classrooms, often under the guise of inquiry, where teachers have little idea of the purpose of what they are teaching. Teaching a double page a day from the maths text book may have gone (thank goodness) but in some classes there is little more personalisation of learning happening now than there was then. Teachers still have firm control of the learning in these classrooms, and true student agency is hard to find.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

George Santayana

It is not all bad though. I also see lots of classrooms where the learner really is at the centre of everything that is done. Where students have control of the learning and teachers really understand the purpose of everything they teach. I see most teachers working a lot harder than we did 30 years ago. Personalising learning is more difficult and more time-consuming than teaching from a text book but the effort is worth it.

I have also seen some some excellent examples of MLEs or ILEs (innovative learning environments) or whatever you choose to call them, where personalised learning and student agency are the key, and proven, research-based pedagogy is put before everything. I continue to hope that teachers will visit these classrooms, talk to the teachers and see past the physical spaces into the real changes that are needed to make our classrooms places students want to be, where they feel in control of their own authentic, rich and relevant learning.  

Photos from
Hobsinville Point Primary where supporting sound pedagogy has been the priority when designing learning spaces.

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.