I have been poor at updating this topic, which I apologise for.
Elizabeth Hutchinson has moved the podcast collection onto its own platform, which will make it easier to link to: FOSIL, Education and School Libraries.
Since the previous post, we have discussed the history of UK school libraries from 1986 to 2024 (27 April), and reflected on a year of discussions (27 May).
Our next discussion is planned for 6 July, when we will be looking ahead to some very exciting developments.
A quick update.
The Year 9 Signature Work Inquiry leads to the GCSE English Language speaking and listening Non-Examined Assessment. Students are currently presenting their 5-minute speech, which is followed by a 5-minute Q&A, and I am very pleased with the quality of their work.
I am also delighted that FOSIL Signature Work Inquiry will be a timetabled subject for Year 9 next year, with an allocation of 1 lesson and 1 homework a week, which I will teach. This will allow me to develop this inquiry even more purposefully.
Meaningful curricular links with English and Geography (sustainable development) remain, and I am developing a meaningful curricular link with Theology in terms of Catholic Social Teaching.
I have produced a brief overview of the inquiry below:
I am now working on a subject overview and description for the Curriculum Information for Lower Seniors booklet, which I will share when done.
A lot has happened since I started this topic.
Firstly, the lesson to relate the field trip to the process of Heroic Inquiry (click on image to enlarge).
In preparing for this lesson, I came across the following map of Herm (click on image to enlarge), which provided us with a focus for our field trip/ heroic inquiry.
Secondly, the field trip itself, which coincided with ideal weather conditions (which proved significant to our inquiry). We developed the following questionnaire (click on image to enlarge), and we were able to interview a wide range of exceedingly friendly and helpful Herm Island staff (8) and visitors (8). I was deeply impressed by how inquisitive the pupils were and how keen they were to document their experiences on the field trip, in both writing and drawing – I will share samples of this later.
Thirdly, the lesson following the field trip. I created a chronological presentation of the field trip, which included a word cloud of responses to our questionnaire (click on image to enlarge) – note that I did not separate residents from visitors.
I was very pleased that we are able to use another map that found to calculate that we had walked about 2 miles during our field trip (click on image to enlarge).
We are going to produce a field guide to Herm for the next cohort of heroic inquirers to use and develop further, and pupils will each capture a personal highlight of their field trip in a drawing accompanied by a written reflection (click on image to enlarge), which will help shape next year’s field trip.
I will update on progress towards the field guide in due course.
Students have now finished drafting their essay and are working with their English teachers to develop their essay into a speech. I missed the first of these lessons last week due to the Year 2 (Grade 1) Signature Work Inquiry field trip to Herm Island, but will reflect on this aspect in due course.
In ICT this week, students produced their poster for our Year 9 Signature Work Inquiry Celebration on 20 June (click on image to enlarge).
With the introduction of the essay into the Signature Work this year, it occurred to me that the poster, which I developed last year, also serves quite well as an introduction to the idea of an abstract. I will explore this more deliberately next year.
Students are drafting their essays and I am deeply impressed by the quality of their work (click on image to enlarge), especially considering that more broadly we are working to centre education in the learning process, rather than in the teaching process, encourage initiative and independence on the part of students, and bring students to grips with original thought as expressed in books and other media.
Edit: I will develop this further, but I should add that this is a sure way to develop academic integrity and to be sure of academic integrity. Furthermore, read what these students have written, or, better yet, discuss it with them, and you will be in no doubt about how much they have learnt for themselves, and how deeply they have learnt it.
To develop the idea of learning through writing further, Gordon Wells (2001)* continues:
The processes of thinking, such as categorizing, hypothesizing, reasoning, and evaluating, are not only realized in language, in the sense of being made manifest in speech and writing, but also actually constructed and improved through its mediating means. … The mediating role of dialogue in knowledge-building is probably most evident in face-to-face discussion. … Knowledge-building also takes place in the written mode … the writer engages in dual dialogue: with the audience to whom the text is addressed and with himself through dialogue with the emerging text. By the same token, reading another’s text also needs to be undertaken dialgogically. … Equally important, it is through the same sort of collaborative knowledge-building that each of us develops understanding of what other people have already come to know, as this is represented in texts and other knowledge objects. (pp. 184, 186-187)
Following on from the essay flowchart and essay plan graphic organiser above, I developed the essay draft graphic organiser and essay exemplar below (click on images to enlarge):
*Wells, G. (2001). The Case for Dialogic Inquiry. In G. Wells (Ed.), Action, Talk & Text: Learning and Teaching Through Inquiry (pp. 171-194). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
For various reasons, some of which relate to timetabling, it was not possible to start working directly on the speeches at the start of this term (3a below). However, this did allow me to re-think the function of the 1,500-word written Extended Elevator Pitch at the end of last term (2b below), which was meant to lay the foundation for students to build their speeches on. Consequently, I moved the re-thought 1,500-word written piece from Term 2b to Term 3a, which I will explain further, although it still serves to lay a foundation, and a more solid one at that, for the students to build their speeches on, as well as prepare themselves for the subsequent Q&A session.
I have been reflecting on the following thoughts about the theme of learning through writing from The Development of a Community of Inquirers in Action, Talk & Text: Learning & Teaching Through Inquiry (Wells, 2001, emphasis added)*:
Linda: I conjectured that perhaps if writing is used as a tool for what I call ‘rehearsal thinking,’ would our oral discourse be one in which more will participate as well as [be] more substantive? … So I decided to use writing as a tool for individual thinking before embarking on a class discussion. … The consequences were amazing. First the pool of ideas surprised me. … It also provided the less confident…a chance to ‘see their own thinking’ & therefore feel more confident in being able to ‘read out their thoughts’ rather than having to respond not only spontaneously but also at the turn-taking speed of oral discourse. Another is that writing slowed down one’s thinking, making it more deliberate & intentional allowing one the ‘space’ to be more thoughtful, making one’s thinking visible for review & changes. Very significantly, writing provided everyone a ‘same-time’ turn & therefore increased dramatically the pool of knowledge which linear turn-taking in oral discourse does not. (pp. 12-13)
Gordon: [The resulting plan] indicated a focus on writing, not as a finished product, but as a tool to be used in some subordinate activity. It also indicated an expectation that action and talk would be intimately connected to the written text. (p. 13)
This led me to re-think the Extended Elevator Pitch, which was really a very loosely structured script for the speech, as an essay, but an essay as a tool for building knowledge and understanding rather than as an ‘assessment’ of knowledge and understanding. Because the English speech and Q&A is integral to the Signature Work, the fact that the Signature Work is an inquiry-based exploration of a significant issue, problem or question made a persuasive/ opinion or argumentative/ position essay most appropriate.
This aligns well with the FOSIL priority skills for Construct and Express:
It took me some time to think my way through the essay writing process, which resulted in the following essay flowchart and graphic organiser, which I have just given to the students:
This development has raised some important questions, which I will reflect on in due course.
*Wells, G. (2001). The Development of a Community of Inquiry. In G. Wells (Ed.), Action, Talk & Text: Learning and Teaching Through Inquiry (pp. 1-22). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
On 13 April 2024, Elizabeth Hutchinson and I met for the 10th in our ongoing monthly discussion about education, school libraries and FOSIL-based inquiry.
This week we discussed the history of UK school libraries from 1937 to 1986, although this history does not unfold in isolation from developments elsewhere.
Listen to this episode here, and listen to the rest of the series here.
On 9 March 2024, Elizabeth Hutchinson and I met for the Ninth in our ongoing monthly discussion about education, school libraries and FOSIL-based inquiry. Listen here.
Hello, Jannath.
I would make the focus developing engaged and empowered inquirers over Years 7-9.
This would allow you to use the Portrait of an Engaged and Empowered Inquirer at Year 6 (see below) as a starting point for Year 7.
You would then be able to use the Portrait of an Engaged and Empowered Inquirer at Year 9 (see below) and the Portrait Attributes Developed Through Inquiry in Years 7-9 (see below) to frame their development over this time according to your specific circumstances, and bearing in mind that the skills listed in the Portrait Attributes Developed Through Inquiry in Years 7-9 – which link to Empire State Information Fluency Continuum graphic organisers – are indicative, and not prescriptive.
In terms of the inquiry process, the FOSIL Inquiry Cycle Skills Sets (see below) could be helpful in identifying a more specific focus for each year, as could the FOSIL Priority Skills in Transition Years (see below).
For example, our Year 9 Interdisciplinary Signature Work Inquiry at Blanchelande College has developed as its specific focus reading and reasoning within each stage of the inquiry process, which requires use of and reference to reliable sources, with a view to an oral presentation and Q&A for their GCSE English Language NEA. This is different to the Year 9 Individual Project that we developed at Oakham School, which had as its specific focus formally presented persuasive/ argumentative writing based on evidence uncovered in reliable sources in response to a personal inquiry question formulated by each student.
The Signature Work inquiry, or equivalent, in Year 9 serves, then, as a culminating project.
Portrait Attributes Developed Through Inquiry in Years 7-9 (PDF download).
FOSIL Inquiry Cycle Skill Sets | Download as PDF or PNG
FOSIL Priority Skills in Transition Years (PDF download)
Thanks, Elizabeth, and congratulations, Jannath – your extraordinary journey with FOSIL continues.
I have some thoughts on the curriculum/ framework/ plan, but will need to return to this towards the end of the week.
In relation to introducing FOSIL to staff, some of the FOSIL Presentations might be helpful, especially those we developed for INSET at Oakham School and, more recently, Blanchelande College.
Your responsibility for staff research is exciting. Although we lost touch with our colleague, Chris Foster, when we left Oakham School, he was promoted to a similar role to yours, and we had begun to discuss the topic of student research. He shared some of his early thoughts in the following post before we left Oakham, which may be helpful: Making Sense of Evidence in Education. I have some further thoughts on this, which I will share as soon as I am able.
My apologies for not updating this:
Elizabeth and I next meet on Saturday 9 March 2024.
I have been meaning to return to and develop this post, and hope to have an opportunity to do so soon.
In the meantime, I want to briefly update the direct instruction Vs inquiry debate with some more recent articles, and note two things:
The articles below are listed in reverse chronological order, which I will add to:
The polemic against inquiry is ‘grounded’ in evidence drawn from the field of cognitive science, but this ground is less stable than it appears. This is explored very accessibly in the following blog post by Matthew Evans (a headteacher): Evans, M. (2024, February 13). Is CogSci in education a surging wave? Retrieved from Matthew Evans: https://educontrarianblog.com/2024/02/13/is-cogsci-in-education-a-surging-wave/
Evans’ blog post was prompted by the following blog post by Christian Anderson, which is also worth reading:
Hello, Elizabeth. No, not yet. The book has gone from the commissioning editors to the series editor, who was supposed to get our chapters to us by Christmas for final editing, but I have not yet received mine. The intention was to have it ready by the middle of the year.
Sorry for the delay in replying, Ruth, and we are so pleased that you are back in touch.
Yes, this is the dilemma that our profession finds itself in and, based on my slowly growing understanding of UK school library history, I think to some extent has created for itself. Now, where to start…?
Please persevere, because your students, your classroom colleagues and your professional colleagues need you.