This term, in Religious Education, Stage 1 have been journeying on an inquiry driven by the question ‘How Do I Belong?’ This inquiry has led to some incredibly deep thinking from students and has inspired action. 

We commenced the inquiry by looking at where we belong mainly through the form of groups in the community that we belong to. 

We then started looking at the Sacrament of Baptism. We explored the purpose of Baptism; to be welcomed into God’s family. This led to some interesting wonderings by our non-christian students who had not been baptised. “If I am not baptised, am I still part of God’s family?” In a standard unit about baptism this question may have been brushed over or pushed aside with no time to explore it. Being in a process of inquiry we let the students questions and wonderings lead the process so we decided to facilitate a discussion about it. Having less than 40% Catholic in our school and probably less than that in our classroom we realised it was an extremely important question to address and explore.

This week we had our liturgy where we sing and pray as a stage community. Within this liturgy we also take time to celebrate the learning that has taken place throughout the term. During this, the same student who had that huge wondering at the start of the unit (If I am not baptised, am I still part of God’s family?) stood up to share her learning: “Baptism is a sacrament of initiation that welcomes people into God’s family but even if we aren’t baptised we still belong to God’s family and he loves us very much.” 

As part of our exploration of belonging we also encourage students to take action. What are we going to do with our new learnings? Students decided that their inquiry project would be to create a class welcome box for new students that arrive in our community. Our school is continuously growing and it is quite normal to have new students arrive and start even as late as Term 4. Students designed welcome items to give new students. They made welcome cards, maps, a timetable of our learning day and lots more. These will be stored in a box and new students will be able to pick something from the box on their first day at school. 

 

This term, I have seen the power of inquiry. Students driving the learning through actively questioning and wondering and then being inspired to take action.