I. General Information
School Name: Nakusp Elementary
School District: SD#10 Arrow Lakes
Inquiry Team Members: elizabeth tupper elizabeth.tupper@sd10.bc.ca
anna rumaner anna.rumaner@sd10.bc.ca
Inquiry Team Contact Email: elizabeth.tupper@sd10.bc.ca
II. Inquiry Project Information
Type of Inquiry: NOIIE Case Study
Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Intermediate (4-7)
Curricular Areas Addressed: Career Education, Language Arts – Literacy, Language Arts – Oral Language, Language Arts – Reading, Language Arts – Writing
Focus Addressed: Literacy, Core competencies (for example, thinking, communication, personal and social)
In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? We were going to be focusing on service learning, but our plans took a turn when the opportunity arose to take part in a community interview project with the whole intermediate team at our school. We ended up doing an interview/writing project instead. In a single sentence: “Will conducting an interview project lead to a more meaningful writing project?”
III. Spirals of Inquiry Details
Scanning: During the scanning process we noticed that there were a substantial number of students who could not name two adults in the building who they thought believed in them. Choosing a project that would connect them with more adults in the building in meaningful ways became an important focus. They were also very passionate about connecting with their community in meaningful ways. Having opportunities for the kids to engage in cyclical learning, so that they could gain mastery rather than rushing from topic to topic, was also important.
Focus: We were hoping to help them connect to more adults in the building, build confidence in their skills by engaging in cyclical learning, and connect with the community in meaningful ways. We had also noticed that when we do research projects the students have difficulty getting past the AI summary. We were hoping that by connecting the students with real people they would need to “dig in” rather than relying on surface learning.
Hunch: Our hunch was that many of our new students were feeling disconnected from our school and community in general. Our school does many cross-class and cross-curricular projects throughout the year which give students an opportunity to connect with more adults in the building and deepen their learning. Our hunch was that this project would be a good fit for us.
New Professional Learning: We needed to learn how to be interviewers! We were lucky enough to have a colleague with a relative that is a retired CBC reporter. He came in and worked with the staff and students to learn the basics of interviewing, then conducted an interview for the students to watch live. We all got to learn together, which was a really neat experience. We also needed to learn some new tech skills so that we could upload the recorded interviews. We ran transcriptions so that the students would access the information more easily.
Taking Action: Our first step was to meet as a team and decide who we would ask to be interviewed in our community. We tried to get a wide cross-section of age, gender, and profession. We were able to secure an athlete, outdoorsman, politician, artist, musician, our elder in residence, a person who immigrated to Canada as a refugee, a pilot, the reporter and our superintendent. The reporter came in and spoke to all five classes about the interview process. They (and we!) learned about how to prepare for an interview (lots of research!) and how to craft good questions that will get interesting answers. The students watched the reporter interview the musician live, then engaged in class discussions about good question writing. They then practiced crafting questions for the interviewees. The teachers did the actual interviewing while the students watched. We could not believe how engaged the students were. Some of the interviews were almost an hour long and the kids were engaged the whole time. Many of our students who usually find sitting and listening were very engaged. After watching a couple of interviews the kids went back to the drawing board and made up some new questions for the remaining interviews. The difference between their initial questions and final questions was revealing. They were really starting to understand how to elicit longer and more interesting answers.
Once all of the interviews were completed, the students did a multi-genre writing project. We have done multi- genre projects in the past and getting the kids to really know their subjects was always a sticking point. It sure wasn’t this time! They knew a lot about their subjects and were much more willing to go back to the videos and transcripts to check their facts. They were also much more aware of gaps in their knowledge.
One of the things that surprised us was some of the common themes that came out of the interviews. The students got some really neat life advice!
Checking: This was a really successful project. We heard from many students and parents about the impact that this project had. The students learned a lot. One of the benefits was having them see their teachers as learners as well. We were clear with them that we were learning as we went along as well.
Reflections/Advice: We have already started talking about what we might do next year. One of the benefits of doing multi-grade projects is that the kids get to engage in cyclical learning. We would like the older students to conduct their own interviews next year. This was a great way to get the kids connecting with adults in their community, and could be a good way to get them connecting with the elders and olders next year.