One of my only memories from school about inquiry was when I was in P7 and we were studying Australia as a project. In pairs, we had to pick an Australian animal and were given laptops in school to compile a double sided page of information on our chosen animal using information we could find on the internet or in books etc. I think that some of the benefits of it was the fact that it was something that we were really interested in and excited to find out more about! We were given the freedom to find out what we wanted to know and note it down in our own way. It opened our eyes to the different ways that we could find out information and helped us practice the way of ordering/ sorting our information into suitable paragraphs and categories. I think that this enabled me to learn more because I feel I absorbed more of the information about my chosen animals this way. One disadvantage of this method is that (in particular on the internet) children could find a lot of false information, however, a given time of feedback would help to highlight this and correct it.

I observed a lesson in my placement class in which they were about to start the rainforest topic and so the pupils each produced one of the KWL graphs. It gave them time to reflect on what they already knew about the rainforest and to get excited to think about what they would have liked to learn about.

I think that this approach to learning is great because it lets the pupils feel like they are in control of their learning and can lead to them becoming a lot more eager to learn. It starts off a spark of curiosity in a pupil and leaves it open-ended so that the pupil is independent and free to search to find out more. It also helps the teacher to distinguish what their class already knows about something or any misconceptions that they may have. I think it is definitely a method I will use with my own class in the future.