Reply To: An Introduction to Inquiry in the Primary Library

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

This is a fascinating glimpse into how you are positioning the systematic and progressive development of engaged and empowered inquirers over the course of six years, which lays a strong foundation for secondary school, and this is exactly the kind of deep thinking combined with visionary planning that we need.

Your emphasis on questioning in all Years reminds me of the following two quotations, which, if kept clearly in mind, guide us well in our work with our students:

• To question means to lay open, to place in the open. Only a person who has questions can have [real understanding] (Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 1994, p. 365).
• Given particular subject matter or a particular concept, it is easy to ask trivial questions. … It is also easy to ask impossibly difficult questions. The trick is to find the medium questions that can be answered and that take you somewhere (Jerome Bruner, The Process of Education, 1960, p. 40).

Being given permission to have/ ask questions, and then being willing and increasingly able to explore answers to the most fruitful of those questions, is essential for learning, and is the work of a lifetime.

To clarify, students in Years 1-6 have one 50-minute library lesson every 2 weeks? Is this for the whole academic year? Have they started yet? Have you given any thought yet to what the respective culminating products in Express might be, given the rich possibilities that you have created?

I am looking forward to an opportunity to discuss this in greater detail.