WHITTIER TEACHERS WORKING ON OUR PROGRAM OF INQUIRY

In-Service Day, March 2nd- Staff met in the library all morning to review our existing IB Program of Inquiry that includes six Units of Inquiry at every grade level. The morning was organized and facilitated by our IB coordinator, Cindy Bigelow and kindergarten teacher, Maurie Marcil. We looked at the new science standards and our social studies standards to see if our existing units of inquiry still matched the standards. Since we spend 4-6 weeks of in-depth study with our units, we wanted to make sure that they are aligned with the curriculum and standards that we are required to teach. We hadn't taken this kind of in-depth look at our Program of Inquiry for three to four years so this was very meaningful. It is also something that our IB Evaluation team suggested that we do. At every grade level there were beloved units of inquiry that we will have to give up or rewrite. Also, IB has created a new planning template for our units of inquiry that is four pages long rather than two. The reconstruction and alignment of our Program of Inquiry is essential to IB instruction. We made a good start and clearly have more work ahead as we continue to rewrite units and refine our school-wide Program of Inquiry. A copy of our existing POI is available on the Whittier website and in our main hallway.