During our introduction to the Writing Process at the Editing stage, following the proofing reading marks, I encouraged students to circle words that needed spelling to be checked. I explained that they will use only 2 of 3 reason to place a circle around a word:

1. circle words that you want to be sure you spelt correctly
   
2. circle words that you know you struggled with and you feel are spelt incorrectly
   
3. I will circle words that you don’t know you have spelt incorrectly
   

So as part of the Editing stage, we pause for a Spelling Inquiry. This also needed an introduction. I had planned to model how to inquire into your own spelling but stopped myself once I was standing in front of my students, I felt that the first step I took would set the direction, tone and importance of what we were learning about and I thought, “Why was this important enough to teach and learn?” So that is where we began. We had an open discussion, sharing our thoughts, feelings, experiences, understanding and knowledge of spelling. 

We have been working hard over the years to refine our Who We Are Unit of Inquiry. We are always striving for the unit to be as engaging, relevant, challenging and significant as our remaining five UOIs. We are happy with our progress so far and feel that we have come a long way to help create meaningful inquiry for our students. It is always exciting action our reflections from the past year. Here are some of the ideas that are working well with our classes:

1. Social Skills
2. The Concept of Responsibility and PYP Attitudes and Learner Profile
3. Reading with 8 Reading Strategies

Leigh Ann and I have found that planning an inquiry with students is a must, it's a lot of fun too! We are still learning how to make student's voices the loudest but we've found this idea a great step in the direction we are aiming for.

We use Kath Murdoch's Inquiry Cycle (found HERE) on the IWB, or you could do this with marker on large poster paper, to plan a basic overview of our inquiry ahead. It's a great visual and way to manage time with a longer inquiry unit. We return to it during our inquiry to check our time progress and make adjustments to our plan as needed.