PuddingPlease I don’t know much about the enquiries based approach though I must admit, I thought it was more for teaching humanities and science type subjects. How does it work with things like persuasive writing and maths?
So I don’t know for a fact that this is inquiry based but it sounds like it. DD was sent home work where she had to choose an object (lego brick, paperclip, whatever) and go round the house estimating and then measuring how many lego bricks or whatever things were. I tried to describe this to her before going off to work, and in typical fashion she forgot all of it. She called up her grandpa (who couldn’t see the page) and tried to describe it and he said just get a tape measure, so she did it all with a tape measure.
Next week’s homework was to similar with a ruler/tape measure. Could we not have fucking skipped to that instead of trying to decipher the many step complexity of choosing a random object and then faffing about trying to line up how many of it it was? Now in a class where they are doing this 9-3 then I can see how it would be an activity that gets everyone moving and provides some interest, but for doing at home while multitasking for work while trying to explain what it even means, and doing really a maximum of half an hours actual work a day - maybe we could just distill it down and teach them how to use a ruler in the first place.
I can see what they are trying to do, it’s probably how people first came to the concept of measurement bla bla bla. But I’m not convinced it changes any sort of end product and it definitely wasted my time.
I like the idea of problem based learning and inquiry and doing practical things rather than working through textbooks - in school. I mean they are there for 6 hours a day, textbooking for 6 hours would kill a kids love of learning.
But in this sort of scenario where I can’t keep her focused for more than 5 minutes and it takes all day to get 6 batches of those 5 minutes - just give me 6 5-minute worksheets for her to do and we’ll be good. At least it would only take me 5 minutes to arrange and I can spend the next half hour nagging, as opposed to currently where I have to decipher which activity they will do from which box, what materials they need, which mind numbing math game I’m supposed to play with her for half an hour, etc etc. It’s just not appropriate to home learning.
