Please see below my final actions and thoughts about the overall ‘Mask and Masquerade inquiry‘ now that it is complete:

• Reflect – In the final lesson 4, students reflected on the masks and supporting paragraphs they had produced over the Easter holidays.  Students paired up and filled in the ‘Peer reflection’ sheet in their inquiry workbooks, answering statements about their partner’s mask – what they had learnt, liked and suggested they could improve. This activity required students use questioning, listening, reflecting and summarizing skills.  They then presented their partner’s masks to the class, reinforcing these skills, whilst also helping to improve their presentation and communication skills.  From this, the whole class learnt about the different types of masks that each student had produced.
• Students completed the ‘Self-reflection’ sheet as homework and discussed in the next library lesson (the inquiry consequently spilled over into 5 lessons and 4 homeworks). In lesson 5, students fed back to the class what they had found hardest, what they did well, what they had learnt, what they felt they could do better and how successful they thought their inquiry was overall.  The students overwhelming focused on reflecting about their masked product – the practical making of it, materials used etc. – rather than the overall inquiry learning journey – the questioning, investigating, knowledge and new skills gained etc.  I consequently think that further scaffolding is needed to guide students when filling in this sheet (or perhaps more precise questioning to encourage students to reflect about the overall inquiry process?).

Final reflections as a librarian on the Mask and Masquerade inquiry

The Inquiry into Masks and Masquerade was a rewarding, creative and challenging experience, for both myself, Julie as collaborative teacher and the year 8 students participating.  I think we all learnt many knew skills, shared and developed our topic knowledge and gained a clearer understanding of inquiry, the FOSIL framework and the overall process of learning through investigation.

The inquiry began by looking at superhero masks in lesson 1, aiming to draw on students own popular cultural knowledge, whilst connecting the themes to Shakespeare’s plays and the Venice festival, which we also looked at.  From this, students gained a much deeper understanding of the masquerade ball and use of masks in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, which they will hopefully be able to apply to other Shakespeare’s plays that they will be studying in future years and contain similar themes (Romeo and Juliet in year 9 and King Lear in the sixth form).

Students were encouraged to explore and build on their own personal knowledge of masks and masquerade, resulting in a much wider type of mask being investigated.  These personal investigative journeys were expressed through the diversity of styles, techniques and materials students used to create their masks in the construct and express phases, including a manga character from Naruto, a villain influenced by the most recent James Bond character Safin in No Time to Die, a El gato (cat) mask from the Venetian festival and a Brazilian bird mask from the Maadi Gras.  The masks were a creative, expressive way for the students to display what they had learnt, and a visual way for their classmates to instantly see what they had investigated.

The inquiry was a very different form of learning from the usual prescribed curriculum delivered in a formal classroom, where a limited range of work and assessments are used.  The benefits of allowing students to go on their own individual and explorative learning journeys (within the time limits) and the knowledge and confidence they gained, cannot be underestimated.  The students enjoyed a much more open ended and creative learning process, which could be tailored to the individual student’s abilities and interests.  The reflection at the end of the inquiry was a relaxed and organic way to assess learning, which was led by the students themselves.  They did not seem to perceive this as onerous or intimidating, which is sometimes the case with more traditional individualistic and comparative assessments.

As librarian, I felt I gained a much clearer understanding of how to run an inquiry-based learning project and the planning, reflecting and collaborating that was required for it to be successful.  This included putting together the inquiry workbook for students to work from, appreciating the worksheets available on the FOSIL site to download for adaption.  The importance of spending time on the initial planning with the collaborative teacher, and the ongoing reflection and adaption needed as the inquiry progressed.  I also gained an understanding of the benefits of uniting both subject and skills teaching in one inquiry, whilst adapting both these types of instruction to the students’ own knowledge.

It was through the practical application of the FOSIL cycle and working through the six phases that the learning process became clearer, and the necessary stages needed to help students progress through their learning journey.  The FOSIL model provided a clear and logical structure to the inquiry, whilst reassuring Julie and I that this much freer form of learning was going in the correct direction!  To do each phase justice and ensure students understood the cycle, I think considerably more time is needed to explain the model and stages to them (more than 4/5 lessons anyway).  It would be great to see students become familiar with the FOSIL cycle through repeated inquiry projects and then be able to place themselves within the framework whilst undertaking an inquiry project, moving forward or backwards as they require.

Through running an inquiry project on a topic related to the English curriculum, specifically Shakespeare and Much Ado, I felt in sync and embedded with what other teaching staff were doing and the curriculum being taught in school.  This is in contrast to my usual year 7 and 8 library lessons, which are not always directly correlated to the specific curriculum (English or otherwise) being taught at that time.  The teaching of information literacy skills through the curriculum topic of masks made the skills feel much more relevant and necessary to the construction of a final product and the overall learning process (as opposed to a standalone skills lesson, not integrated directly in curriculum teaching).

I found the subject teaching on masks and masquerade the most challenging and out of my comfort zone.  This was due to being used to teaching skills-based library lessons, rather than English subject content and also being unsure what students already knew on the topic.  This was where having Julie as the subject teacher in the inquiry lessons was invaluable.  Her knowledge of the curriculum and also, the students individual learning abilities was something that I didn’t possess and could be drawn on as the inquiry progressed.  Julie informally co-taught the lessons, sitting with the students during the activities, reflecting and discussing ideas as the lessons progressed.  This was a great and quite novel experience as a librarian, to have a supportive educational partner and co-teacher to bounce ideas off, both during and in between lessons.  I felt reassured by Julie’s presence as we ‘live’ collaborated in lesson, responding and adapting sometimes the lesson content and homework given etc.  I also felt the masked inquiry gained gravitas in the eyes of the students and they took it more seriously than would perhaps be achieved otherwise.

Julie and I had the opportunity to do something creative, collaborative, experimental and dynamic through the mask and masquerade inquiry.  It was very different from the usual, prescribed curriculum, enabled me to teach information literacy skills in a more meaningful and I think useful way for the students, who gained a lot overall from the inquiry in terms of knowledge, skills and the ability to reflect.