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The Library: Home of Heroic Inquiry

"Education is fully human education only when it is liberal education, preparing the youth to exercise their power to think in a genuinely free and liberating manner [which has as its end] the fulfillment of the deepest potentialities of the human being in the world." - Jacques Maritain

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Blanchelande Virtual Library (LibGuide)
Only the person who has questions can have real understanding.
Hans-Georg Gadamer

A contemporary liberal education at Blanchelande College

The process of becoming who we were fully created to be is framed at Blanchelande through the Hero’s Journey, strikingly visualised in a rich iconic vocabulary that describes the emergence of heroic character.

Equally striking is the alignment of the stages in Hero’s Journey with the stages in the process of learning through inquiry – the Heroic Inquiry journey, which was developed at Blanchelande by our Head of Inquiry-Based Learning, Darryl Toerien.

Heroic Inquiry is based on FOSIL, an internationally acclaimed instructional model of the inquiry process, which is the subject of an upcoming book by  Darryl and his colleague in the US, Barbara Stripling – Teaching Inquiry as Conversation: Bringing Wonder to Life – to be published by Bloomsbury Libraries Unlimited.

The Library: home of inquiry-based learning

The purpose of Blanchelande’s unique Inquiry-Based Learning department, centred in the Library, is to collaborate with and encourage collaboration between classroom-based subject specialist teachers to enable our students to become engaged and empowered inquirers, coming to know and understand their world and being prepared to participate responsibly in their communities. The department is led by two professionally qualified teacher-librarians who both began their own careers as subject specialist teachers and who understand the importance of acquiring disciplinary knowledge and skills in an interdisciplinary way.

Inquiry begins with a stance of wonder and puzzlement, inviting students to invest personally in their learning – asking themselves “why should this matter to me?”. Inquiry begins with questions, which is why all of our departmental webpages also do. It is a carefully scaffolded process, with expert guidance all the way from both subject and inquiry specialists. Students are encouraged to learn for themselves, with increasing independence as they get older. We understand the need for a blended approach, and acknowledge that direct instruction (where the teacher gives information directly to the students) has a place within inquiry as one instructional tool among many.

Further reading

Interdisciplinary Signature Work Inquiries

A distinguishing feature of a contemporary liberal education is interdisciplinary Signature Work inquiry, an extended inquiry-based exploration of a question of personal significance identified and defined by the student.

At Blanchelande we aim to have at least one Signature Work Inquiry in each phase of the school. This allows us to make sure that students have been given the skills and opportunity to practise key inquiry skills at every stage of their education, which are then available for them to use in subject-based inquiries and mini-inquiries that occur as part of routine classroom teaching.

These inquiries are focused on living well within our communities, which have an increasingly global focus as students move up through the school. In Year 1, students investigate our beautiful island home through the question “Why visit Guernsey?”. In Year 2, they venture further afield and look at “Who lives on Herm and what is life there like?”. In Years 6 and 9 we explore the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and in Year 12 students focus on their A-level subjects and the windows they provide on the world. In Year 10 and the Sixth Form we are delighted to be able to offer the our students option to take the inquiry-based GCSE and A-level qualifications – the Higher and Extended Project Qualifications. The Projects Qualifications are rightly highly regarded by universities and employers, as they equip students to deal with real-world questions and find solutions to real-world problems, and Blanchelande is an ideal place to nurture these skills.

Find more details on the Y6-13 Signature Work inquiries below.

Year 6 Signature Work - Cool Water

Cool Water is an ambitious interdisciplinary Signature Work spanning around five months and six different subjects.

The inquiry begins with a Science investigation into insulating materials, with the results analysed in Maths and ICT, leading to students making insulating covers for their water bottles in Art/DT. The spine of the inquiry runs through English, connected by four of the UN Sustainable Development goals: Clean Water and Sanitation; Life Below Water; Good Health and Wellbeing; and Responsible Consumption and Production. Working on skills such as reading for information, notemaking and presentation skills, as well as developing student voice and agency, the initial inquiry into heat transfer broadens out into persuasive campaigns that connect students to local, national and global charities and causes, allowing them to put the Catholic Social Teaching from their Theology lessons into direct and practical action.

Students also earn a British Science Association CREST Bronze Award for their work on this inquiry.

Year 9 Signature Work - Living Well in a World Worth Living in

Heroic Inquiry depends on thoughtful reading and writing in their widest sense, and takes place in an increasingly digital environment. In Year 9, students move from reading lessons to timetabled weekly inquiry lessons run by the Head of Inquiry-Based Learning and the focus shifts from recreational reading to informational reading. The Year 9 Signature work is rooted in the UN Sustainable Development Goals and culminates in the GCSE English Spoken Language Endorsement, where students make an individual speech and answer questions on a real-world problem of their choice related to the Goals.

Although it has its own timetabled lesson, this interdisciplinary inquiry is rooted in English and has ties to Geography and ICT. It forms an essential preparation for the optional HPQ course in Year 10.

Year 10 Higher Project Qualification

Having launched our first Higher Project Qualification course in 2023, following the success of the Extended Project Qualification, Blanchelande is still the only school on Guernsey to offer the HPQ demonstrating the value we place on inquiry. Year 10 students who have been inspired by the Year 9 Signature Work have the option to take the one year AQA Higher Project Qualification, which is a Level 2 Qualification equivalent to half a GCSE. The course is supported by thirty hours of inquiry skills teaching throughout the year, including planning and project management, and students are expected to spend a further thirty hours over the course of a year working independently inquiring into a topic of their choice. They then produce either a 2,000 word research report or an artefact and a shorter research report. All students must also deliver a presentation on their inquiry experience and complete a Production Log chronicling their inquiry journey.

This is a hugely rewarding experience, allowing students to pursue their passions while gaining important inquiry skills that have an impact far beyond the HPQ itself. Our HPQ students have investigated diverse topics such as whether Guernsey should extend its runway, how music affects learning and whether human exploration to the outer solar system would be worth the cost and risk. Artefacts range from works of art to drones.

Alongside the taught course, planned and delivered by Jenny Toerien, our Senior Librarian and Projects Qualifications Co-ordinator, and individual guidance and support, students also benefit from an online course guide in our Virtual Library.

Year 12 Signature Work - Interrobang!? Windows on the World

All of Year 12 benefit from a six week inquiry course in the first half term to help them to make the transition to A-level studies. The course is entitled Interrobang!? after a 1960s punctuation mark, because this captures the “What! Why?” exclamation that represents the sense of curious wonder that sparks an inquiry. The course begins with the idea of reading beyond the curriculum and covers accessing subscription databases, asking good questions, making effective research notes, evaluating sources, citing and referencing and academic honesty. It concludes with a poster exhibition at the Sixth Form Inquiry Celebration.

Students are encouraged to explore their chosen subjects as different windows on the world, looking at where those subjects might take them, how they impact on society and how they act as lenses that affect our veiw of the world. This is also a wonderful opportunity to explore the impact of emerging technologies such as AI on different subject areas.

At the end of this course Year 12 students decide whether to apply for a place on the optional Extended Project Qualification course.

The Interrobang!? course is supported by an online course guide on our Virtual Library.

Sixth Form Extended Project Qualification

Year 12 students who have been inspired by the Interrobang!? inquiry skills course have the option to take the one-year AQA Extended Project Qualification, which is a Level 3 Qualification equivalent to half an A-level (28 UCAS points). The course begins in November and is supported by thirty hours of inquiry skills teaching throughout the year, including planning and project management, and students are expected to spend a further ninety hours over the course of a year working independently inquiring into a topic of their choice. They then produce either a 5,000 word research report or an artefact and a shorter research report. All students must also deliver a presentation on their inquiry experience and complete a Production Log chronicling their inquiry journey. Previous students have chosen topics as diverse as the art and photography of the AIDs crisis, the politics of archeology in Jerusalem, the economics of microtransactions in computer games and the psycology of serial killers. Artefacts have included a neurodiversity handbook for school staff.

With research suggesting that students who do well in the EPQ are more likely to go to university, less likely to drop out and more likely to achieve a higher class degree, it is no wonder that many universities look favourably on the EPQ and are likely to give a reduced offer in other subjects if students achieve a good grade in the EPQ. For those heading instead directly towards other training and employment, the EPQ offers an excellent opportunity to build a portfolio demonstrating a committment to a certain area. It also builds important project management, presentation and inquiry skills. alongside confidence and a sense of real achievement, punching well above its nominal 28 UCAS point weight.

Although the Year 10 HPQ is excellent preparation for the EPQ, it is not essential.

Alongside the taught course, planned and delivered by Jenny Toerien, our Senior Librarian and Projects Qualifications Co-ordinator, students also benefit from individual guidance and support from a subject supervisor and an online course guide in our Virtual Library.

Literacy and reading promotion: Reading to learn

The purpose of the Library programme at Blanchelande College is to enable our students to come to know and understand the world and themselves in it through reading in its widest sense, both non-fiction and fiction. This process of coming to know and understand is a learning process, and specifically an inquiry process, and extends into our support for recreational reading.

Research evidence is clear that there are a wealth of academic, social, emotional, societal and health benefits for those who choose to read in their spare time, and we believe that supporting our children to maintain and develop healthy lifelong reading habits, especially as they make the transition from Primary into Secondary school is vitally important. With screens an increasing distraction, this generation face particular challenges in developing strong recreational reading habits and as a school we have a responsibility to demonstrate how important we believe these are by dedicating curriculum time to developing them.

Building on the firm foundation that rises up through Primary, students in Year 7 and Year 8 have regular timetabled lessons in the Library as part of the English curriculum, dedicated to developing recreational reading and supported by both a specialist Librarian and English teacher. Students design their own personal reading challenges from a number of different categories in conversation with these specialists to develop themselves as readers, whether reading more, or more widely, or more deeply. Regular one-to-one discussions in these lessons encourage the students to reflect on what they are learning from their reading, what they might read next and how to progress through their challenges.

By Year 9 we hope that students’ recreational reading habits are firmly embedded, and we shift our timetabled support to informational reading as they begin their Signature Work Inquiry lessons (see above), however students are encouraged to continue to borrow for recreational reading throughout their time at Blanchelande, and we pride ourselves on being a community where reading is valued. The Library collection, displays, competitions and events are all designed to engage readers of all ages, including staff.

Further reading

A combination of people, places, collections and services

A library is so much more than a room full of books. We love the International Baccalaureate Organisation’s definition of school libraries as “combinations of people, places, collections, and services that aid and extend learning and teaching” (Ideal Libraries, 2018).

People

Blanchelande’s Senior library is staffed by two fully qualified teacher-librarians with an international reputation for inquiry, who support inquiry throughout the whole school. Darryl Toerien, Head of Inquiry-Based learning, developed the FOSIL framework of inquiry on which Blanchelande’s own Heroic Inquiry Cycle is based. He regularly writes on inquiry for international and UK library journals, and speaks at national and international conferences. He has been a member of the board of the UK School Library Association, the Section Standing Committee for School Libraries of the International Federation of Library Associations and Organisations and the National Committee of the CILIP School Libraries Group. He also speaks on a monthly podcast about FOSIL, and is in the process of writing a book about inquiry for Bloomsbury Libraries Unlimited. Darryl and Jenny, Senior Librarian and Projects Qualifications Co-ordinator, together founded and run the FOSIL Group website.

The Primary library is run by Heidi Garner, an LSA with a real heart for libraries.

Students throughout the school have the opportunity to join our thriving Student Librarian teams as part of their Blanchelande Diploma, and in the Senior School this may also be used as a service option for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award.

Places

The Senior Library is a beautiful space situated at both the heart and top of the school and is open before and after lessons, as well as during break and lunchtimes, when it is often a hub of purposeful activity. Senior students also often choose to stay on after school until 4.30 pm and Sixth Formers use the Library for their independent study periods. The Library is a blended space with books, areas for working and reading and a computer area for working online.

Collections

The Library is extremely well-resourced with books and online collections. The collection of books – both fiction and non-fiction – is carefully tailored and constantly developing to meet the needs and interests of students at their stage of life and learning. The Library also subscribes to a range of magazines, journals and newspapers, both in hard copy and digital format, with our digital collections easily accessed through our Virtual Library (LibGuide).

Services

The purpose of the Library is to “aid and extend teaching and learning” and our services reflect that. This might be through maintaining, developing and promoting our collections, supporting students and teachers with inquiry by facilitating collaboration, delivering taught sessions, designing and delivering courses (including the Projects Qualifications) or providing staff INSET. Equally it might be helping an individual student with homework during homework club, running a club, playing chess, running events, competitions and author visits, creating displays, helping with IT issues or providing a welcoming, peaceful, friendly space where students know they can find the support they need. Because our most important mission will always be supporting our students on their current stage of their lifelong Herioc Inquiry journeys, wherever they may lead.

For more information about the Library, contact Darryl Toerien (Head of Inquiry-Based Learning) Email: toeriend@blanchelande.sch.gg.

Useful links

Blanchelande Virtual Library (LibGuide)
Library News
Reading Suggestions and Book Reviews
The FOSIL Group website

Library & Inquiry-Based Learning Department

Darryl Toerien

Head of Inquiry-Based Learning

toeriend@blanchelande.sch.gg

Jenny Toerien

EPQ & HPQ Coordinator and Librarian

toerienj@blanchelande.sch.gg

Heidi Garner

Primary Department Librarian

garnerh@blanchelande.sch.gg