Thanks Julie, it is great to have that feedback from teachers as it will really help when we have other inquiries to plan, especially in MFL. From my perspective, I think the biggest difficulties concerned pupils not necessarily engaging with material as we had hoped – sometimes because those delivering the lesson may not have been sure themselves how it was intended to be used, sometimes because pupils had not been paying enough attention initially, so constant individual reminders were needed during the lessons. This is where we really benefitted from having two of us in the room. Over a number of years of delivering FOSIL based inquiries, we have come to realise that this is an area where we, as librarians, can really add value to the classroom experience of pupils as we can direct them in using the resources we have developed. We do, however, realise that we are lucky to be able to assist in this way so readily. It also highlighted to us the importance of being able to talk to everyone who would be delivering the inquiry through the plans at the outset. This is not always easy to achieve, and the regular catch-ups between the teachers were a great help here, but if teachers can understand the thinking behind material, and so how to expect pupils to make use of it, they are better placed to get the pupils to use it in that way if they try to offer resistance.
It will be interesting to hear pupils’ impressions of the experience, especially as this is a year group whose experience since the start of year 7 has been influenced by the MYP’s focus on inquiry learning.
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