Inquiry

At St. Peter’s Catholic Primary School we use an Inquiry approach to learning across a broad curriculum. Inquiry based learning is a process that draws on a range of tools and strategies to develop thinking and research skills, collaboration, communication, independence and ownership of learning.

The context, content, skills and dispositions incorporated provide a balance between curriculum standards, real life contexts, current local and global affairs, as well as student interest.

Our Inquiry units aim to ignite curiosity and develop deep understandings about our world, how it works and our involvement in this world.

Our Inquiry Units are real, rich and relevant multi – disciplinary investigations that aim to develop a cumulative understanding of our four Big Ideas:

• Environment

• Wellbeing

• Innovation

• Community

Each inquiry begins with an essential question to prompt students to become actively and emotionally engaged in the investigation.

The stages in our Inquiry process create a scaffold for students to move from the known to develop new learning – knowledge, skills and understandings.

Essential questions prompt students to become actively and emotionally engaged in the investigation:

• Tuning In
• Finding Out
• Sorting Out
• Going Further
• Reflecting and Evaluating
• Taking Action

Our Inquiry units are co constructed with Learning and Teaching Leader, Class Teachers and Students.

We embrace a variety of models for Inquiry based learning including:

• Project Based Learning
• Problem/Challenge Based Learning
• Play Based Learning
• Passion Projects