Forrest Primary PYP Programme of Inquiry (POI)
Developing a transdisciplinary programme of inquiry from preschool to year 6 to offers our students a broad, balanced, conceptual and connected learning experience. A well-designed programme of inquiry ensures students experience a balance of subject-specific knowledge, conceptual understandings and skills, alongside opportunities to develop the attributes of the IB learner profile and to take action.
In order to engage our students in transdisciplinary learning, our school has created a programme of inquiry that maps the transdisciplinary themes students explore each year and throughout their time at our school. The POI consists of units of inquiry that span across, between and beyond Australian Curriculum subjects at each year level.
The six transdisciplinary themes capture human commonalities that are significant and relevant regardless of where students are in the world and to which ethnic or cultural groups they belong.
Units of Inquiry
Our school's programme of inquiry (POI) consists of transdisciplinary units of inquiry in each year level that include:
- A central idea— the primary conceptual lens that frames the transdisciplinary unit of inquiry and support students’ conceptual understandings of the transdisciplinary theme under which it is situated
- Concepts—specified and other concepts that support higher-order thinking and provide lenses for considering knowledge related to the central idea in a range of ways
- Lines of inquiry—statements that define the potential scope of an inquiry.
- Subjects - subjects from Australian Curriculum play an important role in planning transdisciplinary units of inquiry. They can determine, support, enrich and connect learning.
- Approaches to Learning - skills identified from Australian Curriculum content descriptors from each subject
- Learner profile attributes - learning dispositions that will be explicitly taught during the unit to inspire students to develop international mindedness and take action
Length of Units of Inquiry
Teaching teams have the discretion to decide an appropriate starting point and time frame for the length of each unit of inquiry in order to ensure they are age-appropriate and fit for purpose. An inquiry into a central idea considers the breadth and depth of the learning; therefore, each unit is usually taught over a minimum of 6 weeks. Some units of inquiry may be year long units or taught over time while concurrently studying another unit of inquiry.
