Enquiry Based Learning is not a new idea. It has been spoken about for years, but due to the increasing need for autonomy and the increasing idea that children deserve an input into their own education, this idea is being explored more frequently. Throughout my teaching career, I have enjoyed the cross curricular links that topic work and other numeracy or literacy topics can bring and seeing how alive and involved children become when thy can make a tangible link between their leaning and a real life context.
While I have found an abundance of reading on this topic, I am working through and using this to reflect and critically examine different points of view on the subject. I have compiled government think papers and independent research papers on the subject of both Enquiry based Learning and Interdisciplinary Learning, as the research suggests that these two concepts go hand in hand. While I am more comfortable with the nature of cross curriculum learning (planning a topic – the topic is taught through a variety of subjects) I am intrigued by the idea of IDL wherein the transferable skills between concepts and subjects are used to explore learning and not based on subject specific knowledge.
For example; I have recently began a topic using The Lorax. We will aim to explore the environment an climate change through active an enquiry based learning. This will ultimately be child led. I left a gift of soil and seeds in the classroom and the children had to guess who it was from. This will be built on throughout the school year.
