Day 3

Wednesday, 10th July, 2019

Inquiry-based Learning

Today the main focus was on Inquiry-based learning. During the first session we received a short training on the theoretical background of this method and discussed what the benefits of this approach has.

Inquiry-based learning has become mainstream in the Irish educational system and it has been scientifically proven that this method has a positive impact on students. It is basically a learner-centered approach where students are responsible for processing the data to reach their own conclusions.

Naturally, it only works if it is well-structured and students get clear instructions - just like in the case of any other method. There are four stages of Inquiry:

1. Exploring - What do we already know?, What do we want to find out?, What questions do we need to ask?
2. Investigating- How are we going to find out? How are we going to record our data?
3. Processing- Analysing information, evaluation and organisation.
4. Creating- Presenting the results of our project

We brainstormed lots of values of this approach and concluded that it can have a great impact on students’ communicational skills, contributes to their motivation and independence as learners, develops literary skills, research skills and learning skills.

I have been using this method on a regular basis with my own students, however, there were certain points that I found interesting and will pay attention to in the future. I have learnt the expression ‘social drifter’ - the person who does not really contribute to group work.

Our Inquiry-based Learning Projects

Since the best way to learn a method is to use it, we will also implement small projects during the course. We could choose from 4 different Inquiry-based Learning Projects:

• Reading for enjoyment in Ireland
• The Irish Language in 21st century Ireland
• Dublin: One city, one book
• Statues and sculptures in Dublin city

I have chosen the last topic because I had been fascinated by the great abundance of street art in Dublin and also found the topic interesting and saw great potentials for teaching. We have received a booklet with practical guidelines for the implementation of these projects. They contain really useful ideas that could be adapted to other teaching situations as well.

We formed a group with my coursemates who had chosen the same topic and started to explore the task. We are required to write questions and carry out our research by interviewing various members of the public, doing field-work and browsing websites.

With the other members of my team we visited the IT Lab and carried out an online research and selected the statues we would like to focus on. We collected background information and planned our field-work by designing interview questions. We also started brainstorming ideas for teaching materials.

We were also reminded of our tasks that we need to do by the end of the course in order to receive the certificates:

We need to write a reflective journal on a daily basis focusing on the things we have learnt and ideas we have come up with.

We also need to produce a ppt presentation focusing on the following topics:

• What we learnt from this Erasmus+ course
• Our selected pictures of fields projects
• Practical application of the materials with students
• The result of our Inquiry-based Learning Project

We will present it on the final day.