Cluster inquiry

Inquiry is a real important component in our cluster and it’s really embedded. So in our cluster there’s layers of inquiry. We have our cluster-wide inquiry about writing and practice and the usual spiral of inquiry, and in our schools we’ve got other inquiries and then our teachers have got their individual inquiries. Some of these have been presented at toolkits and we’ve got one of our teachers this year is part of the innovative teacher programme at Manaiakalani and that’s an inquiry on collaboration.

Out of our inquiry, our cluster-wide inquiry at the moment on writing is the development of a cluster-wide rubric for writing. Two of the schools in the cluster had developed their own writing rubric from inquiries that they’d done. We’re bringing a group of teachers together to work on that at the cluster level. We identified that the schools using the writing rubric were having most of the success and accelerating their children, and the Trust is actually paying for those teachers to be released to develop that writing rubric. What we’ve decided is that each school is going to investigate PACT themselves. One school’s used it, one is on the verge of using it, but we’re not at the stage to say we’re all going to use it. That’s going to be an inquiry, whether we use it or not.