In their Term 2 Social Sciences and English class, Yui and Amelia undertook a review of our lunchtime sports equipment and needs. During the inquiry process, they interviewed students and staff members to establish a new system for borrowing and returning equipment and audited preferences of sports equipment. 

On completion of their inquiry, I met with Amelia and Yui to hear their findings. During this meeting, I suggested that they should write to the Home and School Committee, sharing their findings and requesting funding to further the project. I’m pleased to report that the committee has committed $500 to their project, allowing them to investigate future purchases based on the popular sports equipment requests from their inquiry. The students then hope to begin a roster system for their ‘borrow and return’ programme. 

I’m sure you can hear in this commentary the cross-curricular learning opportunities available from this inquiry - they include formal writing, survey skills, using excel to collate data and create graphs, relating to others to name but a few.

Congratulations to Yui and Amelia for taking on this project, and bringing it towards a conclusion. I am sure that your tenacity in completing this work will be a great service to others. We’re proud of your hard work!

From time to time, students propose inquiries and are supported to complete them as part of their school learning. If your child is thinking along these lines, ask them to talk over their ideas with their teacher.

They may take inspiration from other, related projects happening around the school, for example, the screen-time audit (a cross-sectional study of all students at the school by our Year 7 and 8s), or the single-use plastics interventions happening in Room 3, or the education for sustainability projects occurring in Year 13...