[This message was posted a while ago back in May 2021 but did not seem to appear on the wall then, so sorry for the delay in reposting it – here it is]
Barbara and Darryl,
Thanks a lot for your replies, it is greatly appreciated.
The descriptions were taken from the FOSIL cycle pages and I compiled this table to help me explain the stages.
I enjoyed collaborating with Camille as her teaching perspective focused on the educational aims for instance, her idea to use three FOSIL phases meant we all had time to complete the task in the time given. Her continuous support, formidable efficiency as well as her communicative high spirits at all times kept the motivation high. I do think teachers had a great start and the seed seems to continue growing as one of our workshop team member recently mentioned he was looking at the link re FOSIL and Math, and we’ll be using the model in one of our Media Literacy projet with my colleague in charge of the subject in year 9.
Thank you so much for your message, I look forward to continuing our conversation too.
With a link: Inquiry workshop
Thank you Elizabeth.
This is thanks to you I discovered FOSIL during a training with the SLA back in May 2020.
A while later, with our Head of French Literature, we both held a workshop during a school INSET day in April:
“Knowledge starts with inquiry – how can we all become better inquirers?” to introduce the FOSIL model and help advance inquiry.
I am sharing the powerpoint presentation with this post. What was most interesting to realise is that it can be helpful to all subjects and across all levels. We were lucky to have a team of 20 participants from various Departments teaching from Primary School pupils to IB students.
We started with an introduction of the model and its stages, and worked on two activities, one on the stages of FOSIL by small groups of different disciplines and levels, the second one focusing on building a scheme of work for one unit, by department this time (Art, English literature, French literature, Geography in French, History in English, Math, Modern languages, Primaire). We notably found that the group of Primary teachers had many ideas and came up with a very detailed scheme in Theatre.
A question that came up was that in Math, the stages of construct and express were very similar and sort of joint. Elizabeth suggested this link for further reading https://fosil.org.uk/forums/topic/inquiry-and-maths/
Very interesting and fulfilling experience.