Children learn best by doing. The Inquiring Minds partnership offers teachers an opportunity to move their classroom to a community site for a week of hands on, multi-sensory learning. Student learning is enhanced by meeting curriculum expectations through meaningful connections to the real world.
Inquiring Minds offers an innovative approach to informal learning pioneered by Gillian Kydd and Don Harvie. Intriguing and enriching sites (such as museums, fire halls, civic venues and nature preserves) welcome a class of children to use their site as a classroom for an entire week. Students and teachers use this new ‘classroom’ to engage in learner-led, hands-on, inquiry-based learning and exploration through tours, journaling, and a host of creative activities. This model makes the stuff students learn in textbooks come alive, and has an incredible power to inspire students and teachers!
Since its inception in Calgary in the 1990’s, this immersive learning model has grown into an international movement from Newfoundland to Singapore. It is known in Calgary as ‘Open Minds or Campus Calgary’, ‘Inquiring Minds’ in Edmonton, & various monikers in places beyond.
To see where week-long, site-based, inquiry programming is around the world go to the Beyond the Classroom Network.
inquire, learn, explore 