As a school, they self review and their achievements reflect high standards. The children demonstrate a love of learning, children are engaged, they build self-belief, they encourage children to take risks, the children are resilient-they are able to learn and move on from and through challenges.
Since 2001 Inquiry Learning has mostly been done at syndicate levels. They ask the question, does action research make a difference to the learning of the children?
The school has devised their own model called The Howie Learn model (The how we learn).
The head stands for VALUES, the heart stands for THINKING and the tools stand for SKILLS.
I really liked what I saw happening, you saw "Howie Learn" in every classroom and so it has become what they stand for and believe in, from the juniors through to the seniors.
They believe, the driver is the big idea, with integration and ecology, as ecology is a big part of their school. They are wanting to micro analysis Inquiry to study the impact at child level.
The school used to do 8 Inquiry a year, a few years ago, but what they shared was, keep it simple and be realistic! Time is always an issue, but I understand the need for keeping a model simple, user friendly, with step by step instructions, so that it becomes easy for all to use and so that its hopefully easier to get all on board. All need to be heading in the same direction, allowing for a variety of pace, until the confidence grows and then the realization hits, that they are not on the bottom rung of the ladder, but already 2-3 steps up.
