Hello Darryl, Elizabeth and Lucy,
thank you for your replies which are very clear and very useful.
Darryl, of course feel free to move this discussion wherever you prefer; your reply is very useful because it has helped me visualise how the group would work together in a workshop; [I can see a workshop/brain storming session where the children work through the concepts (what do I know? what do I want to know? etc) and then they could begin to investigate etc.] Your reply has also given me a much better image of what a Resource Pack might look like; I was thinking of including pages from some reference book from our library plus the Britannica, as you mentioned. (You can see that one of my weak areas is connecting images to words… I need to “see” something in order to have a “mental image” of it… I think there’s a bit of Plato there somewhere…). “The evolution of enquiry” is great – really useful guide to refer to. I agree that enquiry led learning is not a straightforward A>B pathway but rather may require going back for a second or more bite of information before attempting to construct and express. My modest take on enquiry led learning is that the teacher or librarian needs at least a passing knowledge of the subject; you don’t need to be an expert because teaching is learning, but you need to be a step ahead if you are to lead. As I mentioned in my post above, I thought my critical skills were good, but I decided to attempt the King Alfred paper as an exercise.
Thank you for your message Lucy; I realise a year 7 child will think very differently but I just wanted to practise, so if a see a child is struggling I can try and “scaffold” – or point them in the right direction; I hope I am making sense.
Elizabeth – thank you for your reply. The link to the document for year 7 to 13 will be particularly useful. I already had the primary school ones – either you or someone else from Guernsey must have emailed them to me a couple of years ago – I cannot find the emails although I had saved the documents – this will remain a mystery! But thank you once again for your encouragement and the information!
Thank you all very much for the time you have taken to reply and all the information and links you have generously shared,
Kind regards
Vittoria