Students at Victoria Terrace Public School in Fergus were given unique autonomy over their own learning through the school’s water inquiry project.
The inquiry started the week of March 23 when the Wellington Water Watchers and Grand River Conservation Authority made presentations at the school and the students used an exploratory play centre in the school’s gym to learn and ask questions about water.
“Then based on their questions we sorted them out into big themes and from there we came up with four topics for junior that they were really wondering about and four topics for primary,” said Grade 1/2 teacher Barb Caunter, one of two instigators of the program.
“And then we spent weeks working on hands-on activities and really exploring their questions.”
From March to the middle of May students and teachers spent one day a week in the separate groups.
Some primary students worked with a teacher to learn about aquifers, water usage and waste, and the geographic locations where water is scarce and abundant, Caunter explained.
Another primary group investigated how garbage reached the ocean. They considered where the water in sewage drains goes and how that water and pollution reaches the ocean.
The group is also working to get stencils painted on the ground near storm drains to discourage people from throwing waste into them. That initiative, called the Yellow Fish Road, has already been adopted in Guelph.
Other topics investigated by students include:
– the science of water and why water is blue;
– water consumption facts and mathematical statistics;
– different habitats and how all life and water is connected; and
– plastic water bottles, their possible impact on the environment and how tap water is treated.
To help promote the use of reusable water bottles, one group designed water bottles and will be selling them.
The final junior group is aiming to raise $500 before the end of the school year, with a portion of the water bottle sales going to a program called “Ryan’s Well.”
The program installs wells and provides education to locals in developing countries about how to maintain the wells, as well as providing all the other necessary amenities that use water such as hand washing stations.
“Every school has a character [education] focus on how is it that we support each other in our schools but we also show compassion for our community, our community here in the school, our community in Fergus and then the bigger community as well,” said school principal Kim Kowch.
The Ryan’s Well fundraiser is one of the ways Victoria Terrace PS is teaching compassion.
This is the school’s second inquiry. The first, held last year, was a garbage inquiry.
Kowch said the inquiry method is as much a learning experience for teachers as it is for students.
Both years teachers conducted a book study coinciding with the inquiry.
This year, teachers continued meeting and using the Making Thinking Visible book to implement different learning strategies throughout the inquiry, Kowch said.
“It all linked to our school improvement plan and the important things that we’re doing,” she explained.
“Reading, writing, math, all of those things, but embedded in the natural focus and recognizing that that’s … children, building their understanding of the world through environmental inquiry.”
Resource teacher Cathy Novosad said the inquiry method goes against the grain for what some think are normal teaching methods.
“A lot of parents still think we should be doing the three hours and kids should sit in desks quietly and memorize stuff,” she said. “That’s not the way it should be.”
Kowch agreed.
“For those kids who naturally have a little bit more energy who are not so good at just sitting with pencil-paper tasks and focusing in on one thing, they’re up, they’re moving, they’re engaged in technology because let’s face it, the technology is where they’re getting lots of their information,” Kowch explained.
Though the inquiry was completed in May, the school is planning another inquiry next year.
