Letter to Parents / Guardians

Here's what we sent parents about our inquiry-based learning pilot project:

Last month, we implemented a pilot program for inquiry-based learning at the Grade 8 level.  The provincial government recognizes inquiry as a way of personalizing learning because it fosters the skills and competencies learners need to succeed in the 21st century.  We are very excited about giving learners the opportunity to pursue their own interests, while they develop the necessary skills to be life-long learners and responsible global citizens.

The Grade 8s have had regular morning classes and have been using every afternoon to explore the big idea, “What is our relationship with water?”  Learners have had the opportunity to work in small groups or individually.  In this collaborative, cross-curricular setting, subject-area teachers have taken on advisory roles, observing learners and assessing the skills and competencies required across all disciplines. These competencies include:

• Communication
• Critical and Creative Thinking
• Personal and Social Relationships

Learners have been working at refining the big idea into their own more manageable guiding questions. They are required to gather artifacts of learning that demonstrate their progress including any research, and they must use digital journals and portfolios.  The March Report will include anecdotal comments that will explain how learners have fulfilled the required competencies and learning standards across all curricular areas.  

We invite you to help us continue to foster a culture of inquiry at St. Pat’s.  Please feel free to ask your son/daughter about his/her inquiry studies and encourage him/her to continue to probe more deeply.  On Tuesday, March 4th, the learners will showcase the results of their inquiry in our gym and science wing, from 6pm to 8pm.  We invite parents and community members to come and celebrate personalized learning at St. Pat’s - mark your calendars!

Let's Do This!

This week we launched our grade-wide Inquiry on Water... and it IS messy!

Let me give some background:

There are ten of us on the PLC for implementing inquiry at our school.  Of the ten, five actually teach courses at the grade eight level.  Of the five that do teach grade eight courses, no two teach a grade eight class in the same block.  What these facts mean is that we have had to be creative with who was available each afternoon to introduce all the logistics of the model we wanted to adopt.

We did our first afternoon in the cafeteria with ALL 100 grade eights. We spoke about the Inquiry Process, which should have been a review because we had expected our colleagues to do some practise with the process in the prep phase. What we immediately noticed was that we had to actually practise the process again.  They are only thirteen years old after all and for most of them, this was the first time in their lives we weren't asking them to arrive at an answer!

After two afternoons of practise around how to create questions that might inspire deep learning, we showed the entire class a few clips from various videos about water.  Learners worked in "practise groups" to map questions and make curricular connections.  We knew we were closing the door a little bit on true inquiry, but our fear was that since many of our learners did not come from cultures of inquiry, they might not know how to approach it, and besides, this particular group of learners needed a bit more structure. So, we offered learners the guiding question: "What is our relationship with water?"

Each learner posted three questions on a long piece of paper that we draped over lockers in the cafeteria. We arranged the post it notes according to commonalities within curricular areas - we realized later that maybe the curricular areas weren't necessary, but more on that later. Even though it felt backward, I was pleasantly surprise by the quality of the questions and by the ways in which learners grouped themselves.  Some learners decided to work individually straight away; others chose their friends; most chose to work with people with similar interests.  We had a few issues around certain people working together, but we eventually decided we had to let go.

The most difficult thing about the whole process is not being in control.  Instead we have to give learners space to move in what we (educators who were "learners" in a system that asked us to complete tasks) might consider the wrong direction, all in the name of teaching creativity, problem-solving, and critical thinking.