Hi Darryl
Thanks so much for responding so quickly to my query re FOSIL for the lower primary year gropus below yr 6. I think that perhaps Kay above and I as primary school librarians are thinking along the same lines!
I agree with you that even for lower years the FOSIL headings could stay. After all in year 1 they are used to words such as ‘phonetic’, ‘grapheme’, ‘trigraph’, ‘reciprocity’, ‘reflective’ ‘resilience’ and ‘resourceful’ as part of the 4Rs, so Connect, Wonder, etc are well within their grasp.
But as you already have pointed out, the wording of each explanation at the learning cycle points per year group, would need to reflect their ability to understand what they are being asked to do. It might be possible to use the same wording for KS1, LKS2 yr 5 and then Fosil yr 6, but I would consult with teaching colleagues around that.
I think it is important to keep as close to the FOSIL set up and graphics as possible, so as to ensure uniformity as children move up the school.
I actually attempted a whole school approach to inquiry learning for my school when I undertook the SLA Libraries Learning Programme for their librarians conversion course, which started with what you would expect from yr 6 inquiry learners then worked down the years simplifying each one. But what with one thing and another I didn’t get nearly far enough in its implementation across the whole school.
The main obstacles I think are:
that the primary school curriculum is so packed that any inquiry learning is incorporated into, for example, a 30 min topic and therefore there is very little time to complete the whole inquiry cycle. Checking for understanding therefore is tricky when undoubtedly primary children need much more support for inquiry learning than secondary school children, who are expected to and are able to learn independenently in that process. However, just having the basic cycle inquiry points that continue throughout out as children move from yr 1 to 6 would be invaluable. The sooner they are familiar and learn the cycle the better.
And I agree the graphics are important but not sure if it would be better to have different graphics for each year group or keep to key stages, or keep graphic changes to a mimimum.
Thanks for pointing me to this forum where it’s great to read about the discussion on the inquiry process for younger children.
Privacy Policy
