The best way to describe our inquiry-based learning is ‘Explorations’ and we will give an example of how one of these would progress and evolve.
Step 1: Breadth of Explorations
The Curriculum Coordinator at our school will have set out 6 areas of Explorations at the beginning of the year for each class that each are based in a certain area of the curriculum – so for example: one would be more science based, another more arts based, another would focus more on history or geography etc.
Step 2: What we know, what we’d like to know
The class teacher will introduce the Exploration title to the class, for example: Rivers. The students will spend time cataloging what they already know about rivers, what intrigues them, what questions they have about them, and what in particular they might like to learn about them.
Step 3: Aligning this with the Skills from the Irish National Curriculum/ International Skills Continua
The class teacher will then go back to the skills from the Irish Curriculum and see where meaningful connections can be made for the students to be able to learn and develop their skills in relation to this Exploration – this will be a cross-curricular approach so as they learn about rivers, they might be doing the following (depending on the interests of the class):
- Physical Geography – mapping skills: learning about rivers in our local area or around the world – but this could also link to Geology if they want to look at rock types too;
- Human Geography/ History – examining sources: researching how rivers change their paths; why have they changed their paths; how have our human developments caused rivers to change;
- Maths – measurements/ data handling: how deep, wide, fast is the river; recording plants and animals that live in and around the river;
- Science – report writing/ recording data: writing a scientific report about their findings and including their predictions, findings and conclusions about what has been discovered;
- Literacy – introducing different text types: learning to write persuasive letters to local councils about pollution; report writing for Scientific reports and posters;
- Gaeilge – etymology of place names: looking at the Irish names for local rivers and examining whether these names came from topographical features, from people/ events in the history of the area, or from errors in translations between the English and Irish.
Step 4: Exploring
Students will then practise their skills as they go about the exploration of the subject which often initiates additional inquiries and wonderings.
Step 5: Assessing what they have learnt
Students then look back at what they have learnt and what new skills they have developed over the topic area – by teaching students to be reflective of what they have learnt and what skills they would still like to develop more, it teaches students to take ownership of their own learning pathway, making them into life-long learners.