Explorations 1 - Guiding Principles
These principles guide the format and features of this resource.
Learning Through Inquiry
- Children are engaged, learn deeply, and develop a wide range of concepts and skills that contribute to their emotional, social, physical, aesthetic, and cognitive development when learning through inquiry.
21st Century Learning
- To participate fully as global citizens and workers, our children must be able to think critically and creatively, know how to work collaboratively, and be able to communicate their ideas and thinking effectively.
Sharing and Communicating Learning
- Children learn by sharing, collaborating, and negotiating their discoveries, creations, and questions, and by listening attentively to others.
The Teacher’s Role
- Teachers observe, document, assess, and confer to plan meaningful, culturally responsive experiences and activities that emerge from and connect to children’s interests, questions, ideas, and abilities.
Observing and Documenting
- We learn about children’s interests, abilities, competencies, and knowledge by listening attentively to the questions they ask and the ideas they offer; observing them solve problems and explore materials and resources; attending to how and what they communicate and the representations they create; and reflecting on how their thinking, knowledge, skills, and theories change over time.
The Learning Environment
- An environment that reflects children’s interests and offers interesting resources invites and supports children to explore, investigate, and wonder while respecting them as active architects of their own learning environment.
Learning Through Inquiry
- Children are engaged, learn deeply, and develop a wide range of concepts and skills that contribute to their emotional, social, physical, aesthetic, and cognitive development when learning through inquiry.
Young children learn a lot about their world before entering school. Their natural curiosity propels them to play and explore. In doing so they learn about how things appear, change, and work. Once their language abilities develop, they begin to ask questions. Their questions focus our attention on what they are wondering about and interested in. The idea of beginning with children’s curiosity can extend to more formal education—school—and lies at the core of learning through the lens of inquiry.
An inquiry-based learning environment is one in which children’s questions, ideas, and thinking are valued entry points to their learning. Teachers using an inquiry approach begin their planning by reflecting on children’s current interests and needs, and by reviewing their curriculum to select a topic of study. This is how most unit or lesson planning begins, but it is what happens next that sets the stage for inquiry. With a topic selected, teachers then engage children in it by offering them the opportunity to connect to prior knowledge, learning, and experiences as they
- explore related materials and resources, and pose questions
- participate in, and pose questions related to, a collective experience (e.g., an activity, discussion, field study, read-aloud, or video)
Teachers invite, encourage, and support children to
- make observations and comparisons, sharing what they know and what they are interested in knowing more about
- reflect on which questions raised are the most interesting and reasonable to pursue
- make and carry out plans to find answers to the targeted question(s)
- make judgments about new information and consider what is relevant to the investigation as they begin to draw conclusions
- connect new learning to what was known, and reflect on how new knowledge may lead to further exploration, investigation, and research
- represent, share, and communicate their new ideas, questions, and knowledge
Throughout the process, teachers are keen observers and facilitators as they connect the interests of many children to the curriculum and topics of study.
Principle in Action
An inquiry-based approach lets teachers and learners work together to create learning environments and set an agenda for learning. Explorations 1 offers a path for shifting from a set of sequenced activities in one area of the curriculum to a more dynamic process that connects curriculum and learning to what children are wondering and thinking about.
This resource offers children opportunities to wonder and question through three different features: Explore, Engage, and Invitations to Inquire. The process may begin with presenting materials and resources for children to explore openly (see Explore sections). You can observe to find out more about what interests children, what they discover, and what questions they raise. These observations inform your choices for activities suggested in the Engage and Invitations sections. Alternatively, you may begin with an activity from one of these sections and then offer resources for further exploration. This non-linear process recognizes learning as a process that moves fluidly between open and guided inquiry. The questions offered in each Engage and Invitation section support the inquiry connected to the labelled subject area(s) (see the Explorations website for more curriculum correlations). Photographs throughout each unit illustrate the different ways that children’s inquiry may be guided and connected.
Activities in this resource offer ways to engage children in inquiry through
- wondering and posing questions, then exploring reasonable ways to find answers
- making a plan to find information, evidence, data
- finding, managing, assessing, and sharing information found through activities such as read-alouds; guided online searches; asking experts; interviewing community members; conducting experiments and field research; and thinking together of next steps
- reflecting on new knowledge and revisiting questions to raise theories and speculation, and/or draw conclusions
- connecting new learning to the targeted topic and Big Idea, in some cases making new plans or raising new questions
- communicating, reflecting, and/or applying their new knowledge
21st Century Learning
- To participate fully as global citizens and workers, our children must be able to think critically and creatively, know how to work collaboratively, and be able to communicate their ideas and thinking effectively.
An online search of “21st century learners” lasting less than half a second brought nearly 7.5 million results—one indication that there is a rich discussion underway about education and how to transform learning so that it is relevant to living and working in the 21st century.
This conversation is based on the understanding that education needs to move from a focus on knowing something to knowing how to find out about something, and then connecting the knowledge in meaningful ways. We have knowledge at our fingertips, and so do our children. We can think of the 21st century as the time when we progress from the current “information age” to a “conceptual age”; a time of a “society of creators and empathizers, of pattern recognizers and meaning makers” (Pink, 2006).
Our graduates need a tool kit of developed competencies that enables them to engage in solving diverse problems, explore and create opportunities, extend their thinking and knowledge, and contribute to society with responsibility and compassion.
Principle in Action
Young children’s natural curiosity and inquisitiveness lead them to explore the world around them and build relationships with others. Explorations 1 is designed to support teachers in creating learning environments and experiences that engage and invite young children to explore and understand their world through inquiry and to develop core competencies, including
- collaborative and respectful participation
- critical, creative, and reflective thinking
- personal, social, and environmental awareness and responsibility
- communication
Sharing and Communicating Learning
- Children learn by sharing, collaborating, and negotiating their discoveries, creations, and questions, and by listening attentively to others.
A safe and trusting environment in which children have opportunities to share questions, observations, discoveries, predictions, and conclusions will promote communication, inquiry, and learning. Children who are supported to express what they know and wonder in multiple ways learn to choose the methods they are the most comfortable with and confident using. They are also exposed to new methods, and viewing the work of their peers may motivate them to try something new.
The entire community of learners benefits when children share in a variety of ways (e.g., through demonstration, the arts, writing, drawing, orally):
- Children learn to attend to and reflect on what they hear and see from others, as well as on their own learning. Listening attentively and speaking clearly develop with practice and support.
- Children can refine and consolidate their learning as they communicate their discoveries and observations, and then reflect on and integrate the responses of their peers.
- Children are interested in the questions, thinking, and interests of their peers. They are motivated to try different activities, pose additional questions, and offer ideas to build on the knowledge of others.
- Children’s sense of belonging to a community of learners grows as they see how their ideas are valued and respected.
- You can observe children’s developing literacy and numeracy skills as they communicate their learning. These observations help to guide your decisions about individual learning and classroom topics.
Principle in Action
Children communicate their learning in many ways. This resource illustrates how
- children meet to share and reflect on their learning to build knowledge
- work is recorded collectively, in small groups, and individually
- learning can be conveyed through demonstration, writing, drawing, voice, model-making, and sharing artifacts and other resources
The Teacher’s Role
- Teachers observe, document, assess, and confer to plan meaningful, culturally responsive experiences and activities that emerge from and connect to children’s interests, questions, ideas, and abilities.
Teachers who embrace an inquiry-based approach are open to the idea that planning is a responsive and flexible process. They observe children to learn what they know, what interests them, and what they can do. They initiate inquiry in many ways, and see that skills, thinking, learning, and understanding emerge from such situations as
- a problem that arises naturally (How should we arrange the new books in our class library?)
- an observation while outdoors or on a field trip (Where are the biggest puddles, and why might they be there?)
- a question related to a current topic (Where is the best place to grow our class herb garden?)
- a school-wide event (How do you want to contribute to celebrating our school’s 100th year?)
With an inquiry approach, a teacher’s role shifts more toward that of facilitator, one who uses core programs, curriculum documents, professional resources, and observations of children’s interests and needs to plan learning opportunities, build knowledge, and support skill development. Of course, classrooms are filled with curious children, all of whom might have different passions or interests at any one time. There is no doubt that balancing the interests and abilities of many children with the curriculum you are responsible for teaching is tricky. An inquiry approach can help children see that their interests and questions are valued, which can lead to them being more engaged in learning.
Principle in Action
Each community of learners is unique; provincial curricula and teaching practices vary, and learning environments are diverse. No one starting point suits all situations. For those new to the inquiry approach, it may be comforting to know that you are not abandoning your existing programs, curriculum, and practices. Inquiry learning is a mindset and approach that you enter into with your programs, curriculum, and best practices in your tool kit. These, along with the resources (both primary and secondary) available to you, will help you gather information; reflect on your own values, experiences, and learning; revise, confirm, or construct new practices; and explore new possibilities. Explorations 1 can support you on this journey. Note that, although this resource is linear, as a book must be, you should feel free to use the units and learning experiences in whatever order you feel best meets the interests and needs of your children, your curriculum, the environment, and the extended community.
Observing and Documenting
- We learn about children’s interests, abilities, competencies, and knowledge by listening attentively to the questions they ask and the ideas they offer; observing them solve problems and explore materials and resources; attending to how and what they communicate and the representations they create; and reflecting on how their thinking, knowledge, skills, and theories change over time.
Many teachers find that ongoing observation, documentation, and conversations help them better understand children’s personalities, skills, knowledge, interests, and preferences in a meaningful and informative way. They use these understandings to make reasoned decisions about how to intertwine children’s questions, interests, and preferences with curricular requirements. Observing quietly and offering children time to reflect (make sense of a situation, process a question or information, add to their own thinking) sometimes can reveal more than jumping in with a verbal nudge or new question. With time, you will find a balance between waiting and offering well-framed, higher-order questions to help reveal a child’s thinking, opinions, and theories.
The integrated nature of inquiry learning activates more than one subject and draws on skills and content from different disciplines. Your observation will focus on the learning outcomes and expectations related to those subjects as well as the skills and processes related to the investigation.
Some observations are planned and have a specific purpose. Others are unplanned, such as noting a child’s spontaneous actions or interaction with a peer.
Principle in Action
Along with the pauses, waiting, and silences that are key to observation, you can use the reflective questions in the What to Watch For section at the beginning of each unit, as well as Watch For prompts during Explore. Each Engage and Invitation offers questions you can use or adapt to guide conversations and reflections. Each featured Extend offers questions that model how to extend a child’s interest or experience to encourage observation, promote research or experimentation, and facilitate communication. Each activity lists key curriculum links. Line Masters to support documentation of observations are available on the Explorations website.
The Learning Environment
- An environment that reflects children’s interests and offers interesting resources invites and supports children to explore, investigate, and wonder while respecting them as active architects of their own learning environment.
The learning environment plays a significant role in supporting children’s social, emotional, artistic, physical, and cognitive development. Creating rich, inviting, and responsive environments requires thought, planning, and the collaboration and contribution of the children. Decisions about the social climate, physical space, and resources should embrace the principles of inquiry; inspire wonder and discovery; activate learning; and reflect and respect the ideas, opinions, and questions of the children. When children are at the centre of their learning and active participants in creating a safe, respectful environment, they feel empowered and valued as members of a community of learners.
Principle in Action
The learning environments in this resource are the spaces where children are engaged in wondering and learning. Most spaces are physical; some are visited as virtual tours. In these spaces, children observe, question, speculate, theorize, and problem-solve, often by encountering materials and primary and secondary resources that enrich these possibilities and encourage discovery, connections, research, creativity, and communication. These spaces are safe, and children can take risks and connect with others to share and negotiate ideas as they build knowledge, exchange points of view, and work toward a common understanding. These environments inspire learning, promote inquiry, facilitate independence, build self-efficacy and self-regulation, and encourage participation and collaboration.