Inquiry Learning
Our inquiry curriculum is a co-constructed curriculum guided by the requirements of the NZC and contextual learning directly relating to children’s interests and their interaction with the world around them. We are guided by the overarching statements and achievement objectives of the NZC and these are stated in planning. We track our teaching in order to ensure coverage of the curriculum aiming at covering curriculum strand learning over a four yearly cycle. This means sometimes we can choose specific learning as a direct response to children’s interest but usually we need to stimulate and guide the interest in order to expose children to new ideas and experiences and achieve a broad understanding across the curriculum strands.
St Joseph’s uses the inquiry approach to integrated learning. We strive to teach literacy and numeracy in authentic contexts within an inquiry curriculum.
The following information aims to provide a background understanding to inquiry learning but we aim to keep our processes simple and consistent throughout the school in order to give the children ownership. Our journey with inquiry learning has taken place over the past 8 years and has had several formats. The present format is:
Teacher’s Role
SOLO Level
Type of Activity
Find out children’s interests.
Plan to link children’s interests/concerns with curriculum learning.
Teach children how to:
Ask meaningful questions
Reflect and evaluate their learning
Tie in literacy and numeracy learning opportunities in authentic contexts.
Specifically teach the thinking skills needed to move from one SOLO stage to the next - provide shared opportunities, maps and scaffolds.
Provide opportunities for action and experience
Prestructural through to Multistructural
Experiences
Identify prior knowledge
Access new information - the more experiential the better
All thinking at this stage can be extended - e.g. see SOLO Map for “describe” which has extended abstract potential
Multistructural through to Relational
Making connections
Reviewing prior knowledge.
Making new knowledge/understandings
All thinking at this stage can be extended - e.g. see SOLO Map for “categorise” which has extended abstract potential
Relational through to Extended Abstract
So what?
Using new knowledge/understandings for social action
Making new questions for further inquiry.
Making life changes based on new understanding.
Transferring new learning into a different context
Questioning
Children should be taught how to question effectively so that they learn how to ask extended abstract questions and develop their ability to make meaningful self-driven inquiries.
Background to inquiry learning
The inquiry approach reflects the belief that active involvement on the part of students in constructing their knowledge is essential to effective teaching and learning - Classroom Connections - Kath Murdoch 2008
The emphasis in the inquiry approach moves from the view that knowledge is something that is "taught" to knowledge as learned. The inquiry approach encourages students, through active investigation, to unify, rather than separate knowledge as they move from the acquisition of facts to the development of broader concepts and generalisations. The inquiry process is centred on process as well as content.
Inquiry learning involves students forming their own questions about a topic and having time to explore the answers
Students are both problem posers and problem solvers within inquiry learning. It is a collaborative process in which both teachers and learners work together negotiating aspects of the curriculum.
It is based on the belief that students are powerful learners who must be actively engaged in the process of investigating, processing, organising, synthesising, refining and extending their knowledge within a topic.
When planning an integrated inquiry unit the teacher:
Exposes the children to a wide range of high interest, active learning experiences which will stimulate curiosity across the curriculum. Then the teacher collaborates with students to select significant topic(s) to drive inquiries which are significant to the children.
MULTISTRUCTURAL THINKING
Before students can develop these deeper understandings they need to identify facts about the specific events, objects, people and phenomena, "Facts are the lowest level of truth about a subject." (Pg1, Focus on inquiry).
RELATIONAL THINKING
From facts, children can adopt a higher level of thinking and organisation, and form concepts. When students build concepts they identify, organise and categorise groups of objects or events to make sense of the way the world works. This can take a long time for children to gain and concepts can vary in difficulty and scope.
The level of difficulty depends on:
previous experiences
direct experiences provided for the students
how abstract the concept
if the concept refers to a process or objects
understanding of several smaller concepts.
Explicitly using SOLO maps can help children at this stage.
To promote concept development it could be helpful to:
get children to share their understandings of the content
present definitions for discussion
provide common characteristics and get children to identify general concepts
provide examples of one concept and ask children to identify it and/or provide other examples
test students' understandings of a concept by providing positive and negative examples.
Use the SOLO model and adaptations of SOLO thinking maps to help the children investigate and deepen concepts at each stage of the inquiry.
Strong units that require higher-level thinking often have a number of key and contributing concepts.
Use an inquiry framework to select and sequence learning experiences across key learning areas.
Employ a range of strategies to help learners make connections and develop understandings, skills and values.
There are many different types of skills used during an inquiry unit:
identifying information requirements
locate organise and use information
curriculum area specific skills related to topic being studied
ICT skills
primary source information skills
processing skills
observing
predicting
constructing
problem solving.
Skills are best taught in a meaningful context, for a specific purpose and for the needs of the learner.
If one of the goals of integrated curriculum is to assist students to develop a "big picture" understanding of their world - then we must teach in a way that promotes understanding.