Image: Accessed 20/08/2013 from http://tinyurl.com/lqb35t9
Background to Class:
The class to be introduced to inquiry-based learning is a Year 5 co-educational class of 29 students in a Brisbane Catholic Education school on the outskirts of Brisbane. It is the only Year 5 class in the school due to attrition of students at that Year level to the larger all boys Catholic colleges.
Students have access to trolleys of laptops that are borrowed through the library. There is not a program of inquiry learning or information literacy existing in the school. There are references to, and examples of, inquiry models in the BCE School Portal for use by schools but it is not proscribed.
There is not a formal program of ICT learning and it is left to individual teachers to teach computer skills and Web 2.0 tools. The Teacher Librarian has been available to assist teachers in these areas. The Year 5 class accomplished research by searching for information in books, collected in bulk by the teacher from the library, and by entering a search term or question in the Google subject line on the laptops. Lessons were mainly instructivist.
History Year Level Description
The Australian Colonies
The Australian Curriculum Year 5 History “provides a study of colonial Australia in the 1800s. Students look at the founding of British colonies and the development of a colony. They learn about what life was like for different groups of people in the colonial period. They examine significant events and people, political and economic developments, social structures, and settlement patterns”.
The Year 5 class will consider the exploration of the land now known as Queensland by white settlers. The broad outline of steps in this study is:
- Teacher-sourced photographs and drawings of many different areas and activities of colonial life in Queensland dating from early to late 1800s.
Assisted by teacher librarian to source images
- In groups, to promote co-operation and collaboration, students will develop questions about the images then refine those questions which might be able to be developed to provide significant information about the image. Discussion of signal words which promote inquiry.
- Time intervals are selected by co-operation between teacher and students. Students work in small groups and select a time interval to work in decided by an interest in an image from that interval. All intervals must be covered, so there could be some negotiation with teacher.
- Groups prepare a mind map of what their historical inquiry will be and the questions and terms they will need to follow
- Skills in information location – books, internet, government departments, associations, personnel
Assisted by teacher librarian
- Locating information
Assisted by teacher librarian and Support Teacher
- Selecting information
- In searching for information for the inquiry developed by the group, the Key Inquiry Questions will also be being asked as a consequence. Those questions are:
- What do we know about the lives of people in Australia’s colonial past and how do we know?
- How did an Australian colony develop over time and why?
- How did colonial settlement change the environment?
- What were the significant events and who were the significant people that shaped Australian colonies? (specifically Queensland)
Assisted by Support Teacher
- Presenting information covering the concepts of history including cause and effect, perspective and empathy
- Reflection of the knowledge and understanding. Discussion of continuity and change from the events and people in the time intervals. Reflection of the process.
My contribution to the ILA
I spent time with the classroom teacher developing the activity. I chose a selection of images and together we discussed which ones would remain in the activity
I provided:
- search strategies using an Oliver Search on the school’s Library Management System
- search strategies using Google
- search strategies using book sources
The search strategies using Google will be detailed for CLN560
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