Inquiry Learning

At Lumen Christi Catholic Primary School we have a deep commitment to nurturing children within our contemporary world. The pedagogy for the school has as its basis the development of a culture of thinking and Inquiry Approach to learning and teaching that endeavours to empower children to be life long learners.

Inquiry-based learning is an approach to teaching and learning that places students’ questions, ideas and observations at the centre of the learning experience.

Educators play an active role throughout the process by establishing a culture where ideas are respectfully challenged, tested, re-defined and viewed as improvable, moving children from a position of wondering to a position of enacted understanding and further questioning.

Underlying this approach is the idea that both educators and students share responsibility for learning.

Our Learning and Teaching will:

• • Support the individual learning goals of each person within the learning community

  • Develop the Habits of Mind

  • Develop children’s dispositions towards thinking with a Growth Mindset

Within our learning community thinking is valued, visible and actively promoted. Children are encouraged and supported to inquire through wonderings, discoveries and further wonderings. Through inquiry children are lead to engage in authentic actions that make connections with their daily lives.

Our Learning and Teaching program is supported by the use of the Victorian Curriculum and Victorian Curriculum 2.0. developing competencies across the Humanities, Science and Capabilities.

The Humanities:​

• History

• Geography

• Civics and Citizenship

• Economics and Business

Science:

• Biological

• Chemical

• Earth and Space

• Physical

The Capabilities:

• Critical and Creative Thinking

• Ethical

• Intercultural

• Personal and Social

Units of work  are guided by an essential question that enables students to discover our world, investigate interconnections with the environment and expand curiosity to ask questions about the changing place in which they live.

Strategies used to build student growth in the Humanities, Science and the Capabilities include: 

• Sequential learning, to build knowledge from Prep to Grade 6

• Assessment, to monitor student achievement

• The use of literature (fiction and non-fiction), to build comprehension skills

• Essential questions and guiding questions, to spark student curiosity and scaffold student learning