Inquiry

What is Inquiry Based learning?

Inquiry-based learning is an approach where students build their own understanding and knowledge of the world, by asking questions or facing problems, and reflecting on those experiences. It starts with exploration and leads to investigation into a worthy question, issue, problem or idea. It involves asking questions, gathering and analysing information, exploring solutions, making decisions, justifying conclusions, taking action and reflecting.

Why Inquiry Based learning?

When students seek to make sense of the world around them, they wonder, plan, analyse, create and reflect. At its very heart, inquiry is all about thinking – thinking in order to make meaning. At Heathmont East Primary School, we encourage students to be curious and to ask questions as it drives their desire to learn.

As students move through the process of inquiry, they can draw on several ways of investigating and expressing their growing understandings – integrating skills and content from not just English and Mathematics but other areas such as history, ICT and the Arts. Not only does inquiry-based learning greatly assist students in developing their knowledge, it also allows for explicit teaching of key skills such as researching, sorting information, note taking, summarising, questioning, planning their process of learning and so many more. In an inquiry-based classroom, learning grows out of students’ natural curiosities to question the world. At Heathmont East Primary School, we use the 5 Cs model (Character, Critical Thinking, Creativity, Communication and Collaboration) to develop our students’ understanding about the world by the time they leave in Level 6.