We’re two years into this Signature Work Inquiry now, so I thought it time to post something about it! If you are new to our Signature Work Inquiries, you can find a brief description of what we mean by that term here. Do post below if you are interested in discussing Signature Works in general. A distinctive feature of our Y1 Signature Work is that it was initially entirely conceived, planned and delivered by the class teacher, who invited us (Librarians) in at a later stage as she was trying to align the authentic inquiry she was already doing with the FOSIL framework being used in the rest of the school.

The inquiry initially began as an exploration of a variety of visitor attractions on Guernsey. Guernsey has, for a variety or reasons, a mixed population with some families who have lived here for many generations alongside many who have just arrived. The teacher wanted the children to explore their island home and develop a sense of pride in the beautiful place where they live. She asked for help in developing an inquiry question last year, and we eventually settled on “Who would want to visit Guernsey?”. This is similar but subtley different to our Y2 Signature Work question “Why do people live on Herm and what is life like for them?”. Exploring these questions in consecutive years, even at this young age, we hope will give the children a sense of the differences between living in and visiting a place. For those not familiar with the Channel Islands, Herm is our beautiful but tiny sister island, with a permanent population of just 65 people, compared to Guernsey’s almost 65,000. If you are interested in the Y2 Herm inquiry, you can explore it here.

For our question, the children:

• Explored what the people around them looked for in a holiday destination and plotted simple graphs of the results together (Maths).
• Visited five tourist attractions on the island (Geography & History): Le Creux ès Faïes Dolmen (megalithic tomb), Fort Grey Shipwreck Museum, Saumarez Park, Guernsey Folk & Costume Museum and St Saviour’s Reservoir.
• Made notes about what they found, including the facilities available in each place, information they had gathered and their own thoughts and impressions (English).
• Painted pictures and created models of each place (Art).

As background, they also drew the crests of all the different parishes in Guernsey and put them onto a class map (Geography).

We wanted them to have an authentic product, so in both years they put on an exhibition to showcase their findings. We had very different cohorts in the two years, including very different class sizes (due to population fluctuations) and a different mix of SEN. In the first year they ran their exhibition for parents, staff and two wonderful special guests from Locate Guernsey (an agency that helps people who are relocating to the island). As part of this they typed up menus (ICT) and sold tickets and local refreshments (Maths). The exhibition was a huge success and the children were so proud of what they had achieved.

This year, with a different cohort, we did the exhibition differently, making it more low key to suit the needs of the children, doing it during the school day and just inviting staff and a few children from other classes to drop in. They still did an amazing job, but we wanted them to have a more outward facing product as well, so I pulled all their work together into a “Young Visitor’s Guide to Guernsey”. Guernsey Tourist Information Office agreed to give away copies to visiting families over the summer, and Locate Guernsey agreed to send electronic copies to new families relocating to the island. The children were so excited that their work would be shared so widely – and the Tourist Information Office contacted the media so BBC Guernsey came to record an interview with the children (which you can see here), Island FM mentioned the booklet on their radion news reports and The Bailwick Express, one of our two island newspapers, published an article about it. It was so exciting for such young children to have created an authentic product that got so much exposure in our local community – and good for the school too, which strengthened the position of inquiry within the school and was a real boost for all the hard work the Y1 teacher had done.

We may be able to reflect on this further in the future – and the Y1 teacher may be able to join us on the forum to give her perspective – but if you have any comments, suggestions, or examples from your own work of authentic products that have worked well with young children we would love to hear them.