Today, Seonaid McGillivray (Headteacher at Stoneyhill Primary School) and
I attended a meeting at the Scottish Government Offices in Leith.
We have been working in collaboration with the Scottish Government Education
and Training Department and Learning and Teaching Scotland on a project to
explore enriched enquiry in more detail. The full title of the project is Enriched Assessment for an Enriched
Curriculum or EAEC.
An ‘enriched enquiry’ is one which supports pupils to develop their
understanding of the world and broad skills and attributes for learning, life
and work, through carrying out a structured investigation. Enriched enquiry is fully consistent with the principles and
purposes of Curriculum for Excellence. The
original model has been developed from successful projects in New Zealand.
The broad aims of enriched enquiry is to allow
children to:
- access
different sources of information and media to explore the chosen topic in some
depth, over a sustained period of time
- plan the
enquiry and exchange and develop ideas about the topic with others of the same
age, and with relevant adults in the school and local community
- bring
together and build on learning and skills from different disciplines, school
subjects and other areas of their lives
- build
working relationships and contribute effectively as part of a team
- explore
important principles and issues, such as human rights or moral, ethical,
social, scientific, economic, or environmental issues, allowing them to reflect
on and clarify their own attitudes and values
- comment
and reflect on their findings, as part of a group and as an individual – how
things are in the chosen aspect of their community, and why
- provide a
personal view on what might be done locally to improve their lives, making a case
for how things might be changed for the better, and what needs to happen to
enable those changes, reflecting challenges faced in the real world
- bring
together their findings and views in a written final report for local
‘publication’
- present a
summary of their findings and recommendations for local action to members of
the school and community
Working in collaboration with Stoneyhill Primary Primary School
last years P7 teachers used the enriched enquiry approach while delivering our Guitar Hero Transition Project.
I think that the model that we are developing for assessment is really exciting
and hope that we can expand on this further as we continue to develop the
project in session 2008 / 2009.
As a result of today’s
meeting we have been asked to contribute to the Enriched
assessment for enriched enquiry: inter/cross-disciplinary studies to develop
skills and attributes for learning, life and work in the UK, Queensland and New
Zealand session at the SLF next Thursday. (Yes, I know it’s not a catchy
title!)
During our 15 minute slot of the presentation we will
talk about how you can go about gathering, evaluating and reporting achievement
in the context of an enriched enquiry and the assessment, and recognition of
pupils’ achievements.
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