ABC of inquiry BALANCE inquiry teacher's dictionary, inquiry teaching

ABC of Inquiry – BALANCE

ABC of Inquiry – BALANCE is captured in the words of Indira Gandhi “We must learn to be still in the midst of activity and vibrantly alive in response”. These words remind us that finding balance is an important but subtle affair. Everyone on a learning community needs an opportunity to reflect on and find ways to balance the demands, needs and hopes that fill their days.

BALANCE: Walking the tightrope…

Balance is the finely developed skill of distrubiting and paying attention to several things at once, while remaining upright and steady. You know it is like walking out on a Friday afternoon and balancing the pizza in one hand, the car keys in your fingers, while holding the necessary chill out drinks in theother hand, all the while casually pushing back the thoughts of the work you need to get done. Its having 6 kids in your class talking and asking questions at once as you prepare the learning space for the morning’s learning engagements and finding a way to drink your coffee while its still hot.

Balance is about finding ways to support and scaffold agency, and knowing when to step in and provide more guided support. Teachers are constantly assessing, reflecting and determining what balanced choices to make next.

Balanced choices about

Group formation — Teacher criteria or student criteria?
Small group or whole class?
Guided instruction or student led inquiry?
When to stop work and go and play, relax or get active

BCW will now use ‘They — themself’ as a singular, gender-neutral pronoun in all subsequent material generated on our website.

BeConWiz Ideas and Thoughts by Carla Holmes, Mary-Denese Holmes, Pearl Holmes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://beconwiz.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://beconwiz.com.