Reply To: Guided Inquiry Design and FOSIL

[Alinda Sheerman Participant]

Hello from Sydney, Australia

I have been using first of all GI, then GID in my K-12 school for about 14 years. This year Lee and I have been discussing the implementation of our New South Wales Information Fluency Framework into our Inquiry process. This is a little similar to what you are doing over there with the ESIFC.

I decided to trial the use of FOSIL when I programmed for an inquiry unit with three Year 5 classes. Lee and I were wondering how this would work – comparing it to using GID on previous occasions.

I found, as has been described above; that the steps do still flow in a similar fashion and that Connect is just a much longer stage than we are used to in using the initial GID steps. I agree that joining the steps makes it easier for students to understand the process. Our Year 5 students are at Investigate and some at Construct and almost ready to Express. I have been adding aspects of GID that I like – Inquiry Circles= and class, group or individual reflections as needed. The process has flowed smoothly and I found that the students seem to understand the process, with its fewer steps, well.

As Jenny mentioned I found I needed different resources at the various stages the same as in GID – with the more general books and sites for the Connect stage and now at Investigate and Construct we are assisting the students to drill down to more specific sites to find specific information as needed. It is not easy with such young students to help everyone at once so we are having the usual challenges and will be making our own reflections at the end.

I will begin collaboratively programming soon for two Year 9 Commerce classes for next term and will use FOSIL for the first time with Secondary students.