Inquiry Beliefs and Practices

Staff have worked collaboratively to establish a series of core beliefs around inquiry learning, which underpin our teaching and learning.

We believe that effective teaching and learning using an Inquiry approach is:

• A learning process that teaches transdisciplinary skills across the curriculum
• Meaningful, purposeful and relevant to children’s lives, interests and prior knowledge
• Encouraging family partnerships which are integral to inquiry learning
• Inclusive to the learning needs and styles of all children’s learning
• Differentiated and inclusive of all children’s thinking
• Igniting a passion for lifelong learning and 21st century skills
• Understanding how and why we learn- teaching metacognitive skills and learning dispositions
• Explicitly and intentionally taught
• Releasing responsibility and providing a sense of agency in children as they develop their independence and confidence.
• Learning through investigative play

In our school and classrooms you will see:

• Researchers: formulating questions and investigating problems, interests and issues.
• Thinkers: children and educators thinking about how we use our thinking and using different strategies to make our thinking visible to others
• Collaborators: children and educators working together on questions and challenges.
• Children taking on various team roles as part of a team, for different activities.
• Communicators: children communicating ideas confidently in different ways for different purposes.
• Self managers: children learning independently and in groups,  to make decisions about their learning.
• All children learning about themselves as learners and setting personal goals.
• All children having voice, agency and ownership at the forefront in their learning
• All children having both personal and directed choice in their learning
• Purposeful, authentic and explicit learning
• Investigations occurring throughout each day
• Visible learning intentions and questions
• Co constructed collaborative learning and planning
• Visual displays of co-constructed Inquiry learning and language
• Children conferencing with teachers, receiving targeted feedback aligned with their learning
• Teachers documenting what they learn about students and using formative assessment strategies
• Teachers consciously embedded in the learning life of each child
• Educators and community learning alongside children
• Educators listening, asking questions and promoting higher order thinking to stimulate and extend children’s talk and thinking
• Children’s interests being reflected in the classroom and their learning
• Happy, curious and engaged learners

So that…

• Children become confident, imaginative and critical thinkers, communicators, and engaged citizens
• Children develop dispositions for lifelong learning such as curiosity, confidence, creativity, persistence, inquiry and experimentation
• We create a community of inquirers.