- Lupton, M.(2014) Inquiry skills in the Australian Curriculum v6, Access, November
- Bonanno, K. (2014) F-10 inquiry skills scope and sequence, and F-10 core skills and tools.
Discuss either of these two analyses and their potential impact on the need for an IL model in your school.
I chose to examine Bonanno, K. (2014) F-10 inquiry skills scope and sequence, and F-10 core skills and tools. I thought that this was a really useful document. Not only did it concisely sum up the different stages of Guided Inquiry, but it gave great suggestions for different activities and resources for each of the stages across different KLAs. I can see this being very useful in my school context. It would make it easier for staff from different faculties to work with me on a GI unit since the suggested activities mean that half the work has already been done for us. I also liked that it allows for cross-curricular unit design and easy integration of the general capabilities.
For instance, if I was working with an English teacher to plan a Year 9 GI unit on the Holocaust to support their study of Elie Wiesel’s autobiography Night, I could refer to this document’s suggested activities for History, Civics and Citizenship, Design and Technologies, Digital Technologies, ICT, as well as Critical and Creative Thinking. In the Open stage we could ask students to engage with the Ask 6 Ws (what, when, where, which, who, why) and get students to put their existing knowledge on this topic into a collaborative workspace such as Stormboard (suggested on the document) or Jamboard (available to DoE teachers via their Google Suite link). This could function as a sort of pre-test activity and allow students and staff to:
– look for aspects of the topic that engage
– identify key words, concepts, ideas
– pose leading questions for discussion and exploration
– use democratic processes to reach consensus on a course of action and plan for that action (i.e. it could help determine which students will work together for the remainder of the unit)
However, in my school context we have a number of students who are working well below their stage level in a number of subject areas. I suspect that the competencies described in each column might be a bit too much for some of our students. This wide variation in abilities could be a barrier or make it difficult to implement GI in my school. Therefore I would likely have to utilise suggested activities from the prior stage column to ensure that students are achieving within their zone of proximal development.