As an Australian teacher-librarian and e-learning facilitator, it is my responsibility to work collaboratively with teachers to plan, implement and resource the Australian Curriculum Learning Areas and General Capabilities. An administration-directed priority is to encourage teachers to become more familiar with the new Digital Technologies curriculum and support them in its implementation. An additional school priority is the teaching of STEM using an integrated approach, as recommended by the National STEM School Education Strategy (Education Council, 2015).
The development of this Unit of Inquiry was in consultation and collaboration with Year 6 teachers who requested ‘Library lessons’ that were completely related to the Australian Curriculum and the work occurring within the classroom, rather than an ‘add-on’. It is intended to take place within the student’s bi-weekly ‘Genius Hour’ time, a flexible time where students are able to move freely between library and classroom to work on their own projects (related to the Curriculum content).
The development of this 8-10 week unit aims to incorporate all of the above goals, using an Inquiry Learning framework incorporating Design Thinking. The unit is a combination of guided, coupled and student-led inquiry and has been loosely adapted from an existing unit of work, from the Digital Technologies Hub, called Learning Environments. A similar (but much more prescriptive) unit has been taught by some of the teachers in the past with unfavourable reviews; it was formerly implemented as a completely structured unit, with one research question and all students completing identical tasks over a 3 week period.
The integration of several Learning Areas and its relevance to the priority area of STEM and the Digital Technologies curriculum (as well as the Creative Commons licensing) provides an excellent opportunity to re-design the unit for Year 5 and 6 composite classes, through a more explicit Inquiry Learning model that incorporates Design Thinking. Maths, Science and Technologies content descriptions are covered explicitly, with scope for inclusion of other Learning Areas depending on student choice. General Capabilities, including Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Capabilities, Critical and Creative Thinking, Literacy and Numeracy are also incorporated.
The core purpose of the unit is to address the Australian Curriculum content. However, the use of an Inquiry Learning framework provides excellent opportunities for the development of valuable attributes, such as a desire for questioning and lifelong learning, as well as future-focussed skills and knowledge, such as information literacy, collaboration, creativity and higher-order thinking skills.
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