Hi there and welcome to the first IDL Blog of this year. It’s Mrs Dougall here. As you may know, I have a different role this year and I am now responsible for Inquiry Based Learning across P2, P3 and P4.  This means that I complete Learning Journeys with the children, starting with a problem/question and working towards them finding a solution using teacher and child led learning across different aspects of the Curriculum for Excellence.   I now teach P3C for 3 periods each week and it is so lovely to be part of their continuing Learning Journeys.

We started this year investigating how plants and animals depend on each other for food. We learned about food chains, developing this learning into food webs and then focused on environmental changes across the Great Barrier Reef.

We then began to focus on seasonality and the challenges of growing and planting in winter in Scotland. We created terrariums (mini greenhouses) and carefully monitored the temperature in them while watching what happened to our plants growing inside the jars.

We have also fitted in two short blocks of learning about Meta Skills, these are the skills that we use everyday in our learning and our Meta Skills Lessons help us to investigate the skills, apply them in practical situations and recognise the importance of them in our daily learning. Recognising how they use these Meta Skills will help equip the children  for the World of Work.

Our first Meta Skills focus was on Creativity and Curiosity and our next blocked focused on the skills for Communicating and Collaborating.  The class teachers work with us to apply these skills in all of our learning. At our recent Meta Skills Day, our visitors were so impressed that the children were able to relate their careers to the meta skills they use.

We are now a few weeks into our third Learning Journey of the year. Our Big Question is – What is Scottish Food? We have investigated the Top Ten Scottish Food Brands, dispelled some myths about the Scottish Diet and completed Food Maps to show the diversity of foods produced around the whole of Scotland and where Scottish seafood is exported to around the world.

It is so lovely to see how excited the children are during their learning journeys and their ability to share their IDL learning.

Mrs Dougall