Inquiry-Based Learning

A note from Ms. de Groot

This year, our class will have an inquiry-based learning focus. This means that students’ questions and ideas, rather than solely those of the teacher, are placed at the centre of our daily learning experience. Inquiry-based learning is a process that builds on students’ natural curiosity about their world. Students are actively involved in their own learning and questions from students drive the learning process forward. Together, we will investigate and build new understandings in order to answer questions, come to solutions or perhaps support a different point of view or perspective. 

As we spend the year together, I will be encouraging students to ask and genuinely investigate their own questions about the world. I will attempt to facilitate student learning by providing the tools, resources, and real life experiences that will allow them to investigate, reflect, and discuss potential solutions to their own questions about the curriculum content the class is studying. This process allows the students to have a real responsibility in determining what they are learning, how they are learning and how they will be evaluated. 

Due to the nature of the process, I understand that you may have questions and/or concerns. Please feel free to ask these questions and engage in this learning process with us as we continue to grow together! 

Nurturing a Sense of Wonder...

“I should ask that a gift to each child in the world be
a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last
throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the
boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile
preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation
from the sources of our strength…If a child is to keep alive
his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of
at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him
the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.”
– Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder (1998)