Building innovative and imaginative curriculum programmes through an inquiry-approach to learning

Ms Carolyn Stuart Southbridge School Canterbury, New Zealand

Focus and purpose

‘What I like about inquiry learning is that we got to spend as much time as we needed on our topic. We still got to do reading and all that kind of stuff, but it was part of our inquiry, which meant that we didn't have to keep stopping.'
Casey, year 6 student, Southbridge School, 2005

Casey's comments help to bring focus and purpose to educators, as we grapple with delivering a curriculum that meets national educational requirements, and the needs of students. She reminds us that it is not just teachers who are frustrated by a fragmented curriculum being delivered in a hurried way. And she inspires me, as an educator, to keep working at building innovative and imaginative curriculum programmes in our school.

Over the past six years, Southbridge School has used curriculum integration and inquiry learning to underpin its teaching and learning programmes. Curriculum integration was our way of coping with the over-crowded curriculum and inquiry learning the tool to deliver child-centred learning. But it has not always been smooth sailing.

Whilst an integrated approach to curriculum delivery enabled teachers to give more depth to the learning, at times we struggled to effectively manage inquiry learning for all the children. We found that many students flourished using an inquiry approach but an almost equal number didn't! We also found that running one topic a term invariably meant that, just as students were getting to the stage in their inquiries when they began to do something with what they had learnt, it was time to move on. It was also causing enormous stress for teachers as they tried to be all things to all children. We still believed that inquiry learning was a powerful approach to learning, but the challenge became how to make it effective for all students and workable for teachers. Solving this challenge required us to look at the very foundations of our curriculum.

Meeting students' needs

New Zealand 's curriculum statements, produced during the 1990s, gave us an input-driven approach to curriculum. Teacher planning began with identifying the achievement objectives that needed to be taught, rather than identifying the needs of students. This resulted in schools focusing more on meeting the achievement objectives than on meeting the needs of their students.

Groundwater-Smith, Brennan, McFadden, & Mitchell, (2001) described this input-driven approach to curriculum as exposing students to a segment of the curriculum for a specified time, and then assessing them using a normative grade, irrespective of whether they had gained mastery over the material and associated skills.

Important change of focus

At Southbridge School we decided to change our focus from meeting the needs of the curriculum to meeting the needs of our learners. In effect we went from an inputs-driven approach to one based on outcomes. King & Evans (1991) describe an outcome-based curriculum programme as a shifting of the focus ‘from objectives derived from content or text book outlines to objectives based on desired changes in the learner'. Another way to look at this approach is described by Spady (as cited in Malan, 2000) as ‘clear learning results that we want our students to demonstrate at the end of significant learning experiences … and … are actions and performances that embody and reflect learner competence in using content, information, ideas, and tools successfully'. This approach to curriculum delivery mirrored Covey's (1989) second habit of highly successful people, which is to ‘begin with the end in mind'. We began to start all our planning by detailing what was the purpose of the learning and what were the key concepts and understandings we wanted the children to have by the end of a topic. We discovered that it became a lot easier to plan programmes that met students' needs.

Using questions to drive our learning

Our first foray into using inquiry learning in our school was to develop a model that detailed the steps children needed to work through, either individually or in small groups. Eventually, we began to see that inquiry learning did not only have to be ‘child-directed' but could also be used as a powerful method of ‘teacher-directed', whole-class curriculum delivery.

Using inquiry learning in this way necessitated teachers coming up with rich questions to underpin classroom programmes. Teachers shared these ‘rich questions' with their classes. They broke down the rich questions into a series of smaller ‘action questions' and used these to scaffold their lesson planning. Powerful, purposeful learning began to occur. This approach is supported by McKenzie (2005), when he states that ‘questioning is central to learning, growing and acting'. Now all curriculum delivered at Southbridge School is underpinned by rich and action questions.

Southbridge School 's inquiry model (version 3)

Having broadened our understanding of how we could use an inquiry approach more effectively in our school, we re-wrote our inquiry model to reflect the changes in our thinking and approach. The model, which has three stages, can be viewed at: http://www.southbridge.school.nz/inquiry.htm.

Stage 1

When planning any unit of work, staff begins by developing a purpose statement, which is the big idea. For example, in a school-wide topic about ‘communication', the big idea was:

‘The way we talk and communicate with each other has a critical influence on our community.

In order to be successful citizens, it is essential that we learn to communicate effectively. Understanding and expressing our own needs, respecting and accepting a diverse range of communication styles, and behaving appropriately in a range of social and cultural settings, are all essential skills we will need if we are to be effective communicators'.

Identifying the key concepts and understandings for our children is the next step. ‘Relationships' was one of the key concepts identified for our ‘communication' unit. The key understandings for this concept included the following.

• Relationships are built or destroyed by the way we communicate.
• It is important to be able to relate to everybody.
• The better you know yourself, the better you can relate to others.
• Relationships change over time.
• Relationships need time to develop and grow.

At stage one, we also identify the achievement objectives and curriculum areas to be covered by the topic.

Stage 2

Planning for stage 2 necessitates teachers coming up with rich and action questions for the topic. For example, for the health aspect of the ‘communications' topic, the rich and action questions for one syndicate were:

Rich Question

How can we improve the way we relate to others?

Action Questions

Ignition

• What does it mean to be a good friend?

Discovering

• How do we relate to others around us?
• How do we communicate to people around the world?
• What information do we need to know in order to communicate?

The teachers use each of these questions to underpin the lessons plans for the unit. Often teachers will display questions, and some of the answers discovered, as a map of children's learning.

Stage 3

This is the place in the model where teachers need to decide how they are going to deliver the remainder of the unit. They may choose to keep the class working together through the creating and communicating stages. Alternatively, they may decide to support children to come up with their own rich and action questions and to work with them to do individual/small group inquiries. What a teacher decides at stage 3 is determined by the readiness of children to be self-directed with their learning and the purpose of the unit of work. The model also allows teachers to have some children doing ‘student-directed' work, whilst others in the class are still working under a more ‘teacher-directed' approach. We see this as a powerful model for differentiating learning in classrooms for gifted and talented students.

Children who are ready to assume greater responsibility for their own learning are expected to keep track of their inquiry using a clear file. Every clear file is set up the same way and the templates we use for this purpose are available in the ‘Kids Zone' area of the school's website at: http://www.southbridge.school.nz/our_learning.htm.We have done this, so that any adult in the school knows exactly where a child is at and can support them in deciding what to do next. We also felt that it was important for children to develop a record of the work they have done, especially when an inquiry can last over several weeks.

Stage 4

Reflecting on achievement and taking what has been learnt forward into the next topic is an important aspect of any inquiry. It is not always possible to link one unit of work to the next but it is usually possible to link learning experiences and behaviours together.

School-wide topics

At the beginning of this article, mention was made of the frustration experienced by children and teachers about needing to move onto the next topic before children have had the opportunity to use their discoveries to create deep meaning. Southbridge School decided, at the beginning of 2005, to overcome this problem by having one school-wide topic that spanned the whole year. We chose the topic ‘communication'.

A brainstorm of all the possible sub-topics that could come under the umbrella of ‘communication' was our starting point. From our ideas we developed a learning map to ensure we had good curriculum coverage.

One of things we grappled with for a while was how to incorporate a Living World Science aspect to the topic. After deciding that a study on the way animals communicate was not rigorous enough for our purposes, we decided to use a study about animals as a way of showcasing our improved ability to communicate.

Curriculum coverage

We have used a Curriculum Coverage Overview to ensure that the depth and breadth requirement of the New Zealand Curriculum Framework is met. Southbridge School 's current coverage chart can be viewed at: http://www.southbridge.school.nz/curriculum.htm . We have identified the following minimums for curriculum coverage over three years:

• Science. Each strand is covered once in a major way and once in a minor way.
• Social Studies. Each strand is covered once.
• Health. Each strand is focused on in a major way once and a minor way twice.
• Technology. Every strand every year.
• English. Each strand at least twice every year.
• Maori. Each theme/setting covered at least once every year.
• The Arts. Each discipline covered at once every year.

Creating successful citizens

The vision of Southbridge School is to ‘Create successful citizens empowered to learn'. As a school community, we believe that powerful learning occurs when we ask questions, discover answers, create and communicate our new knowledge, and then reflect on what we have learned. We know that using an inquiry approach to learning helps us to do this.

References

Covey, S (1989). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. New York, USA: Simon and Schuster.

Groundwater-Smith, S, Brennan, M, McFadden, M, & Mitchell, J (2001). Secondary Schooling in a Changing World. Sydney, Australia: Harcourt.

King, J & Evans, K (1991). ‘Can we achieve outcome-based education?' In Educational Leadership. EBSCO publishing. Retrieved 9 June 2005 from the internet: http://80web9.epnet.com.ezproxy.cce.ac.nz/.

Malan, S (2000). The ‘new paradigm' of outcomes-based education in perspective. Tydskrif vir Gesinsekologie en Verbruikerswetenskappe, 28. Retrieved 10 June 2005 from the internet: http://www.up.ac.za/academic/acadorgs/saafecs/vol28/malan.pdf.

McKenzie, J (2005). Learning to Question, to Wonder, to Learn. Washington, USA: FNO Press.