Conceptual Inquiry at St Matthew’s

During the holidays, did your child try out different things and learn in new and exciting ways? Did they ask questions? Were they at all curious about something? Did they learn independently, even for a short time, or explore topics they were interested in? If you answered: ‘Yes!’, then your child is an inquirer - something to celebrate!

‘Inquiry teaching and learning’ is a term that is often used, incorrectly, to describe any approach or activity that is child-centred, or that provides students with choice. However, inquiry is much more than that. Inquiry is a way of teaching that promotes joyful curiosity, and transferable skills, framed by authentic contexts and real-life problems and purposes.  Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?  

Over the past two years, teachers at St Matthew’s have undertaken professional learning in the area of conceptual inquiry. Our goals were to explore frameworks that support inquiry learning, and to create concept-based units of work that emphasise big ideas and cross-disciplinary learning. We’ve also developed a teaching and learning framework for inquiry – a document that serves as a blueprint for our philosophy – as well as a draft program of inquiry for the school. As a group of adult learners, we’ve come to appreciate the values that underpin inquiry: agency, curiosity, equity, relationships, and growth. And all of this during a pandemic!

Over the last seven weeks, these are the units of inquiry our students have investigated:

• The Earth's natural cycles influence the activity of living things
• Humans make choices that affect the survival of native animals.
• Understanding how living things change helps us to preserve and protect the natural environment
• Knowledge about and connection to living things and their environment allows us to understand and care for them.
• Human activity has an impact on changing landscapes.
• Adaptations help living things to survive and thrive in their environment.
• Communities collaborate to manage challenges.

On Friday, our students will hold their in-house Exhibition, presenting their most recent inquiry to their cohort peers in their classrooms. In the future, we hope to be able to invite parents along. In the meantime, you might like to ask your child to describe their learning journey for you at home.  

 Communication

Regular whole-school communication is available to parents on the following platforms:

• St Matthew’s Primary School Website, which is regularly updated
• Weekly newsletter
• Facebook
• Compass: Notes to parents are now sent via Compass. This includes excursion notes and updates about important and emerging developments in the school.
• Morning and Award assemblies
• Meet the Teacher evenings in Term 1
• Semester Reports sent home to parents at the end of Term 2 and Term 4.
• Parent Teacher Interviews in the middle of the year and at the end of Term 4 by request
• Open Evenings and Days
• And other opportunities when COVID-19 safety protocols allow

Parents are encouraged to contact teachers should they wish to discuss any pressing issues. In most instances, the classroom teacher is the first contact. For urgent matters, parents should call or email the front office.

While our school community values face-to-face meetings and telephone conversations, we acknowledge that email is the most effective form of communication for non-urgent matters and queries. Staff are unable to read and respond to emails during teaching time, and are discouraged from answering work emails outside of normal working hours (ie 8.30am to 5pm). You can expect that your email will be responded to within 48 hours.

We ask that you email teachers, or contact the front office, to make appointments for face-to-face or telephone meetings. Unscheduled meetings before or after school are strongly discouraged as teachers plan and prepare lessons and attend meetings at these times.

Issues related to other students or parents in the school should be brought to the attention of the school and not dealt with directly by parents.

If parents would like to make a complaint, they are encouraged to discuss the issue with the classroom teacher or school Principal in the first instance, depending on the nature of the complaint. If it is not possible to have a conversation, an email is also acceptable, and will generally be followed up with a phone call or meeting. Many issues can be resolved quickly through discussion.

Translators Needed
We are blessed to have a school community represented by so many different nationalities and languages. There are many families in our community who are still learning English and would benefit from having key information and messages translated in their home language for parish and school newsletters, notes home, and social media. For this voluntary position, you’d only be called upon a few times a year to help, and you wouldn’t need to translate much more that a short paragraph.

If you think you’d be able to translate a few sentences for us in Punjabi, Hindi, Nepali, or any other language that you know is spoken by families in our school, please get in touch with Petra Cole, our Assistant Principal (petra.cole@cg.catholic.edu.au) who will put your name down in our register of valued volunteers!