Overview: Inquiry in the curriculum - Designing a unit.

My inspiration & overview

This year has been a steep learning curve (or a challenging maze, if you like!), as I have been teaching both the Middle Years Program (MYP) of the International Baccalaureate and Year 7 for the first time. These are not your average Year 7s however, as I teach in a select entry school where virtually every child in Year 7 is in the top two bands of NAPLAN for reading and numeracy. This presents a unique challenge: keeping students engaged through suitably pitched learning activities without neglecting foundational skills. They are wonderfully curious students who enjoy the opportunity to find things out for themselves – perfectly suited to both inquiry and the MYP.

I team-taught this Ned Kelly unit myself for the first time this year and chose to redesign it following my journey into inquiry learning for two reasons: firstly, there was too much in the initial inquiry for a 10 weeks unit; and secondly, I felt that for a Language and Literature unit, it had too much of a focus on historical context and needed more attention to English and the text itself (though it would make an excellent longer integrated unit). I have chosen to keep the focus on English for the time being, though socio-historical context is of course necessary. I've chosen the novel Black Snake: The Daring of Ned Kelly by Carol Wilkinson, as, although the writing itself is not overly challenging, the novel combines historical writing with imagined anecdotes and stories from multiple characters' perspectives (the key concept of the unit). This immediately invites questions about why different characters might see events differently, whose opinions and memories can be trusted and to what extent.

This unit essentially involves three key learning intentions:

• For students to develop an understanding of the social and historical context in which the Kelly’s lived and develop critical literacy and research skills.
• To develop their literary analysis, writing and speaking skills, namely in character analysis and through the presentation of their speech.
• To combine their knowledge of context and characters to illustrate one perspective on Ned Kelly from a character’s point of view – was Ned Kelly a victim, a villain, or a hero? Here they engage with the Statement of Inquiry: The world in which we exist shapes our perspective.

When I previously taught this unit, students absolutely loved learning about Ned Kelly and his life – their feedback on the unit was twofold: they loved the excursion (so I have kept that in) and they really enjoyed doing their own research and thinking, which I have tried to retain whilst also making the book itself more central to the study. In some ways I find English the most difficult units to make genuinely inquiry-driven, so I set myself a challenge with this unit, however I believe more could be done in the next iteration - one step at a time though! I hope that it inspires you to try a little more inquiry in units too!

Sidney Nolan, Ned Kelly, 1946 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1977. Image courtesy of: https://artsearch.nga.gov.au/detail.cfm?irn=28926