Hands-on learning
A major focus of the teaching that happens in The Arthur Holt Library involves helping students to develop their research skills. It’s almost a decade since we developed the Trinity Research Wheel to help the boys navigate complex research tasks and to understand the skills needed to complete them, but now students need to understand the processes that enable them to design their own experiments or surveys, so that they can find whatever they need to know, for themselves. With that in mind, our team of Teacher Librarians has developed a second research wheel that focuses exclusively on Primary Research.
The wheel guides the boys through their early brainstorming and preliminary readings to the creation of a research question or hypothesis. From there they design an experiment or survey to test their ideas, and then gather and analyse their findings. These can be communicated as an essay, a scientific report, or as something more creative. The boys are then encouraged to reflect on the process and identify where their strengths or weaknesses might lie.
The wheel has already been used in the Year 11 IB Diploma Programme to guide students through the process required for their Internal Assessments and as part of their preparations for the Extended Essay. But perhaps its most exciting application is in the Field Studies Centre. One of the many benefits of the term that every Year 9 boy spends at the Field Studies Centre in Woollamia, is the opportunity for them to extend their learning beyond the classroom. All the boys complete a place-based inquiry project during their time there, and most of them opt to take a more hands-on approach.
Two of our Teacher Librarians, Ms Vicki Courtenay and Mrs Andrea O’Driscoll, visited the Centre at the end of last term to see the boys showcase their work and to introduce the wheel to staff and discuss its possible uses and where it might help support the existing programs. An additional benefit of using a clear process scaffold such as the research wheel is that it also provides clear links between the work that the boys do while away in Woollamia and the teaching and learning that takes place at the Summer Hill campus. The hope is that it will help our students understand that sometimes it really isn’t what you do, but the way that you do it that gets results.
