We’re now six weeks into the intensive interdisciplinary phase of this inquiry and it has been both exhausting and inspiring. I am very grateful that the most complex phase of the inquiry is now almost complete! As a Librarian a key part of my role has been to tie the different strands of the inquiry together, making it as easy as possible for the subject specialists to work together and giving the students a coherent experience. I was really grateful for how open all the teachers were to inviting me into their lessons, so I had a student’s eye view of how the inquiry was working. Making the time to be in all these different lessons has been a real challenge and I am also grateful to Darryl for picking up some of my Year 8 reading lessons (among other things) to make this possible.
So what was I doing on a practical level?
- At the end of last term, I ran a whole school survey about water bottle use and collated the results for the Art and DT teachers to use with their classes. Next year we hope that maybe groups of students will be able to run and interpret a similar survey themselves through their Maths lessons.
- From the start of this term, I supported the Science teacher in most of his lessons – and just to be clear, he is a brilliant teacher who would usually take his groups alone quite happily, but it is often helpful to have an extra pair of hands and eyes during a practical inquiry where students are required to be more independent. Also, this was particularly important in this first year because I designed the Experimental Journal and so had a very clear idea of how it was intended to be used and how to get the best out of it. We will see next year what level of support might be helpful. I also prepared and maintained all of the equipment for the lessons and have drawn up kit lists for next year.
- I made photocopies of students’ Science results where necessary and shared them with the Maths and ICT teachers so that they could start their parts of the inquiry while the journals were still in use in the Science lessons.
- The Maths teacher invited me into one of her lessons so that I could talk with the students as they worked on their inquiry graphs. I made photocopies of the students’ graphs from their Maths books to stick into their Experimental Journals – next year we might try plotting these on separate sheets right from the start, as that will save this job!
- The Art and DT teachers invited me into their lessons to help support the class with making their water bottle covers, and take photos of the finished products. These lessons involved the teachers working with individuals on the sewing machine so it was helpful to them to have some support with the rest of the class, and so interesting for me to talk to the students as they made their products.
- I led (and am still leading) a double inquiry lesson every week for each class (as part of the English timetable) with the English teachers shadowing and supporting me. The aim here is that after this year, once the course is fully developed, this role will switch and next year the English teachers will take this lesson (using the resources I develop this year) and I will support them. This lesson ties all the other strands together and will ultimately lead to the CREST award submissions.
- Every week (during the phase where something was happening across a number of different subjects so all the teachers had to know what everyone else was doing) I sent a summary update email to all staff involved. I also took photos in different lessons and wrote articles for the weekly school newsletter to keep parents informed (advocacy matters!). You can see a copy of some of these articles here, although unfortunately I have had to remove names and photographs.
While it would certainly be possible to run an inquiry of some sort without this level of hands-on involvement, I don’t think it could be as coherent (certainly in this first year when everything is new), particularly as we are spanning not only different subject boundaries and teachers, but also Primary and Secondary school teaching colleagues (as some of these teachers are Primary specialists, while others do the bulk of their teaching in the Secondary phase of our school). I was also keen to make it as positive experience as possible for the staff involved to encourage participation in future inquiries.