Tricks of the Trade is an integrated inquiry unit for students in Year 5 and Year 6. It includes skills and lessons to be explicitly taught in order for students to be successful in their inquiry.
Level of Inquiry
In this unit, students have freedom to explore their own inquiry within the topic Tricks of the Trade focusing on creating a business. The sequence is closest aligned to students engaging in a guided to open, or free, inquiry leading where the teacher has set the topic but students are able to choose the path they take in their learning. MacKenzie’s (n.d.) visual below helps to demonstrate the level of teacher involvement and direction in each stage of inquiry.
Although this inquiry is designed to be guided and free, adjustments can be made for students who need structured or controlled inquiry that is directed by the teacher.
GeSTE Windows
Mandy Lupton’s GeSTE Windows model is broken into 4 interconnecting windows – generic, situated, transformative and expressive (Lupton & Bruce, 2010).
Below is a visual representation of Lupton’s GeSTE Windows model. Breaking this down, the generic window lies within the situated window and the situated window can lie within transformative or expressive depending on the purpose or need.
In this unit of inquiry, there are many generic aspects that can be transferred to other inquiries such as researching skills and Excel functions. There are other key aspects that will be useful across disciplines as well as inquiries as students progress through their education journey but these two are required to be taught explicitly before attempting to transfer skills.
Some of the situated elements of this inquiry include team collaboration skills which are required for students to be successful in this task. This is a skill that is needed specifically for this task but can be applied to an inquiry tasks where students are required to collaborate with others.
This unit allows for students to demonstrate expressive aspects as they are expected to create their own market stall and create a marketing campaign using their own ideas and opinions to persuade others. Having this level of choice allows the students to express their own ideas and understandings.
Although this can be a uniquely expressive unit, it can also be transformative as students are required to think about and create a product or service to fill a need for others e.g. food stall, game stall, arts and craft stall. This requires them to take action and conduct market research to find out what students are interested in and to take action.
Inquiry in the Australian Curriculum
In this unit, HASS inquiry skills hold a focus even though it is an integrated unit. See the table below with the HASS specific achievement standard statements and some of the general capabilities that are being addressed through this unit.
The above achievement standard statements and general capabilities are addressed through the unit design and implementation.
The units undertaken each term have a focus on a particular general capability. Tricks of the Trade is designed with a key focus on Critical and Creative Thinking skills with ICT embedded as well as other general capability areas such as Literacy and Numeracy. Planning units this way allows for all general capabilities to be addressed over the course of the year. Of course other general capabilities must be embedded in each unit to allow for students to engage deeply and meaningfully.
References
Lupton, M. & Bruce, C. (2010). Chapter 1 : Windows on Information Literacy Worlds : Generic, Situated and Transformative Perspectives in Lloyd, Annemaree and Talja, Sanna, Practising information literacy : bringing theories of learning, practice and information literacy together, Wagga Wagga: Centre for Information Studies, pp.3-27.
MacKenzie, T. Types of Student Inquiry [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.learningpersonalized.com/personalized-learning-using-types-student-inquiry/?utm_content=buffer98908&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Inquiry Learning Journey 