Guided Inquiry is one of the keys to establishing the elusive collaboration that teacher librarians have been seeking for many years now. This presentation will essentially be an analysis of the learnings of a team of teachers and teacher librarians about Guided Inquiry as two inquiry units are planned, carried out and evaluated during 2011, with the aim of identifying what works and what doesn’t, and the organising principles behind Guided Inquiry, from the practitioners’ perspectives.

1. GUIDED INQUIRY
DOES IT WORK?
Lee FitzGerald, Loreto Kirribilli, Sydney

2. WHAT ARE THE ESSENTIALS OF A
GUIDED INQUIRY?
• Collaboration
• Open enquiry
• Reflection
• Feedback
• Interventions
• Deep learning
• Information Search Process
• Evidence based practice.

3. COLLABORATION
Teams of teachers and TLs:
• create the GI unit of work
• plan its workflow
• reflect and make changes on the hop
• provide ongoing feedback to students
• co-mark the product, and include
process as part of the grade
• reflect on their own process.

4. ELEMENTS
OF OUR
GUIDED
INQUIRIES

5. EACH STUDENT HAS OWN WIKI PAGE
Lucy C – Cannibalism !
–

6. LEARNING JOURNAL AND FEEDBACK –
EMMA/ARTHUR EVANS

7. JOURNAL – KATE/LUMUMBA
RELIEF!!!!!
I was up until 1:30am last night finishing
off the investigation and editing, refining
my essay and completing the footnotes
and the annotated note-taking grid.

8. OPEN INQUIRY
• Students choose any area within the constraints of
the Modern and Ancient History syllabuses.
• Area of choice clearly spelt out to students.
• Choosing my topic scaffold

9. DEVELOPMENT OF OWN INQUIRY
QUESTION
Difficult for most students.
• Some start too broad
• Topic may have too much written
about it
• Or too little written about
• Or may not be quite historical in
nature.

10. JUST RIGHT QUESTIONS!
Questions worked well when:
• the information available was not overload
or underload
• the enquiry was narrowed by dates, or other
limitations
• there was a clearly historical question, not
overlapping with mythology or literature.

11. A SELECTION OF OUR MODERN
HISTORY QUESTIONS
High range
Who Murdered Lumumba?: An Investigation into the
Mystery of Congo Politics in the early 1960’s. Kate –
perfect marks
Mid range
Assess the Jury's role in the OJ Simpson criminal case.
Adrienne
Low range
Who was responsible for the failed attempt to save
the hostages in the 1972 Munich Massacre? Maddie

12. A SELECTION OF OUR ANCIENT
HISTORY QUESTIONS.
High range
Assess the immediate impact of the Battle of
Marathon and its lasting significance to history.
Ashleigh
Mid range
Assess the different perspectives of the relationship
between Mark Antony and Cleopatra. Romy
Low range
Why has the legend of King Arthur had an ongoing
appeal? Jess

13. INFORMATION SEARCH PROCESS
• Research River analogy
• Different kinds of searching for
different stage of ISP
• Observation showed students in
stages of the ISP
• The Dip.

14. SOPHIE H ON ISP – ATLANTIS
TOP MARK IN ANCIENT
I really feel I made the right decision in selecting Atlantis
not only because it managed to maintain my interest
across the whole course of the investigation but because it
has so much mystery and associated with it, and an
accompanying wealth of knowledge.
I was quite excited in the initial stages of the process,
gathering general information on my topic but got a little
overwhelmed at what appeared to be an endless stream
of information on Atlantis.

15. AMELIA ON ISP – GEORGETOWN
MASSACRE
I had a lot of trouble trying to find an appropriate
topic area , and then the Jonestown Massacre
grabbed my attention! It was just so interesting!
I enjoyed the collection of information on this topic.
Putting all my sources together was a really great
stage where I was able to think as a historian and put
all the evidence that I had learned into some
conclusions of my own.

16. EMMA W ON ISP: SCYTHIANS
INITIATION - I was at first apprehensive when the
thought of a big history essay came to mind
(essays are never my strong point) but I got
excited when I was choosing what topic I wanted
to pursue.
SELECTION – I was excited to get going but had at
least 50 topics I wanted to include, but finally I
narrowed it down and decided that I wanted to
focus my question on the ice maiden of Siberia.

17. REFLECTION AND FEEDBACK
Students to us:
• Reflection sheets
• Journal entries
• Comment function on wiki
• Interviews.
Us to students:
• Feedback from above continuously through
process
• Diary of process
• Formal interventions, one on one interventions,
dictated by need.

18. REFLECTION FROM OUR SIDE:
T/TL DIARY
May 25: good class – kids getting on well. Feeling
inundated with the amount of work involved in
responding to all. It took me nearly all day to respond
to Reflection sheet 2 and notetaking grid.
Think I need to do a better job at teaching them to
search the databases, as they are just not finding the
good stuff on Questia, History Study Centre, History
Reference Centre and on State library databases.

19. USING GI FOR EVIDENCE-BASED
PRACTICE
• SLIM (School Library Impact
Measurement) Toolkit
• Too much reflection!
• Case study approach, but certainly
demonstrates that Guided Inquiry does
work.

20. JESS P: ARTHURIAN LEGENDS
So glad it's finally over!
Such an experience that is well and truly a
one time only experience that I would like to
experience!
Thank you so much to both Ms Bleby and Ms
Fitzgerald! You're the best!!!

21. ROSS DROPS IN ON LAST DAY!

22. DOES IT WORK?
Of course it does!
Works for students –
• Better research product
• High interest and engagement
• Reflection on their own process of learning
• Research skills.
Works for teachers –
• Close engagement with learning process of students
• Benefits of collaborating with TL
Works for TLs –
• Raises teaching profile in the school
• Allows you into the inquiry process of individual students
and to help them through it.

23. BUT IT’S HARD WORK!
• http://jacindarussellart.blogspot.com/2011/05/day-in-life-of-summer-stipend.html
Thank you, Ross Todd!