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 P4B for 3 periods of IDL each week and it is so lovely to be part of their continuing Learning Journeys.

We started this year investigating Energy. Starting with Kinetic Energy, we then moved on to learn about Solar, Wind, Hydro and Wave power. We were then able to apply our knowledge in practical tasks when we visited Glasgow Science Centre. All of this prior learning meant that when we moved onto Learning Journey 2 and investigated Climate Change, the class were experts in renewable power which really impressed our visitor who as a Scottish Government advisor on Climate Change, came to answer all of the children’s questions and give them some practical tips on how as a school we can tackle Global Warming.

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. These Meta Skills will help equip the children  for the World of Work.

Our first Meta Skills focus was on Creativity and Curiosity and we are currently focusing on Communicating and Collaborating.  The class teachers work with us to apply these skills in all of our learning.

As we shared in our Open Afternoon, Learning Journey 3 is all about creating Board Games using sustainable materials. The children have been creating Design Briefs and will work over the coming weeks on bring their ideas to life. I have been so impressed with their Problem Solving and Critical Thinking skills throughout this process.

Numeracy

We have been working on the concept and measuring of area. We used these examples in the class to compare different ways of measuring area, and which one is the most useful and accurate.

This was a really interesting example of using half squares to create a design with an area of 3 and a half squares.

Growth Mindset

We are about halfway through our juggling challenge to help us develop and talk about a growth mindset. Every single person is making progress – we know because we watched our first attempt videos again today!

Design and Engineering

We used Spheros as our engine to create vehicles. We explored the terms manoeuvrable and stable and tried to design vehicles that could move in all directions and survive the inaugural Crookfur Sphero Battle Royale!