This post is part 1 in my inquiry series. To learn more about inquiry click through to see my many other posts about inquiry. If you are new to my blog,

Inquiry-based learning allows teachers to not only help students learn better, but also allow them to tap into their intrinsic motivation to outpreform peers

You hear it all of the time. What’s inquiry-based learning? What is an inquiry-based lesson? It seems to be all the rage in education...

In simple form, inquiry-based learning is more of a student-directed way of learning rather than teacher-directed. In some cases, teachers may set the general framework for learning, but for the most part, the learning is based on the students questions, ideas and passions. But how do you provoke those questions in the first place? Inquiry-based

I have learned that if the class is truly interested in something, they will use reading, writing, and math skills as they explore their interests naturally. I observe and listen closely to discover what they are interested in. Sometimes a book or story will spark an interest. Sometimes an interest is sparked by something a friend shared with the class. Sometimes I notice interests by listening to their stories and their play. Our last large group interest was sparked when one of our friends found an almost dead praying mantis. The kids were fascinated with it and wanted to look closer, observe, and find out more. Every time we went outside they wanted to look for insects! I set out some invitations for them to explore insects further. They quickly started looking through books and models of insects to see what they could find out. I started encouraging them to record what they noticed using different materials. One of their favorites was the book Microsculpture:Portraits of Insects by Levon Biss. It truly took a closer look at insects including closeups of legs, wings, eyes feet, etc. it was such a beautiful book. I set it out with materials for them to create their own beautiful portraits of insects showing what they noticed. They are starting to figure out how to try to spell unfamiliar words by writing the sounds they hear in words. They practiced labeling their insects here also. But the insects they got the most excited about were the ones completely covering our milkweed plants! They wanted to know all about them! We looked at a picture of one and made our thinking visible by recording what we saw, thought and wondered. Then we got our Entomologist tools, took them outside and found out everything we could about them! They were amazing and thorough Entomologists! We recorded everything we noticed and then put some of our information in the computer and found out they are called Milkweed bugs! We then did an observational drawing as Entomologists and used our writing skills to label what it is and some body parts. Here is the display outside our room showing everything we learned about them! The other insects all took a backseat to the milkweed bug! I could have done a traditional insect unit, but these kids noticed something in their environment where they could truly experience it, so I followed the direction they took our insect study. I often let the kids direct our curriculum! They show me what they want to learn and I follow their lead and learn along side them. They were much more involved, interested and excited about learning as we followed their interest. Also, this fell naturally into our science standards of living things and what they need! I can’t wait to see what other interests this group will have that we can dig deeper into! They are definitely bringing in leaves by the bucketful... Here are some other things going on in our classroom: We are still working on those fine motor skills! Our finger muscles need a lot of work! Stories are being created in all of the areas of our room as we learn about story making! Here they are encouraged to show math in an open ended way. At the moment they are working on the numbers 1-10, shapes, writing numbers to 10, counting objects and matching to the correct number, counting to 25, subitizing and patterns. They are also learning to notice math all around us and how we use it in our every day lives. Some Fall art inspiration with sunflowers. They drew pictures of Mrs. Coberly wearing Michigan State colors and wrote “Mrs. Coberly loves Sparty!” Then we decorated her door! They loved this! Unfortunately, the Buckeye/Spartan game did not end well for me! It has been a busy place filled with all kinds of learning!

*PRINT AND DISPLAY IN YOUR CLASS* Print on an A4 or A3 size paper. This Inquiry cycle is inspired by Kath Murdoch. It includes printable sheet having arrows as well. Adjust your printer to fit to page before printing. This resource is for personal classroom use only. Credits for clip arts: LillySillyBilly

Technology in the classroom constantly changes and so are the classroom tech tools that we use every day with our students.

As an interest based learning teacher, I usually start out with something most children have some experience and interest in until I get to know them better. Color is something they always enjoy exploring! I set out paint at the easel and asked, what can you wonder and discover about color here? As they explore, I constantly model for them the growth mindset, language and vocabulary often used in an inquiry based classroom: What do you see? What do you think? What do you wonder? What do you notice? What did you discover? Did you learn something new? Did this change your thinking? These are questions I want them to ask themselves as they explore new things this year! I set up experiences for them to explore colors. They quickly on their own started focusing mostly on different shades of colors. Here are some pictures showing the invitations to explore and the children exploring and discovering things about color. They were also noticing shades of colors of objects in our room! When they discovered them, they would share what they noticed with the class. They noticed we could mix colors to make different shades of colors and that adding white made lighter shades and black or darker colors mixed in made darker shades. I wondered out loud if it was possible to create 100 different shades of colors? We looked at a book called Pantone Coors that you see in many of these pictures that showed there were lots of shades! The kids took it as a challenge and a project was born! We wanted to see if we could create 100 different shades! We did one color each day. We did it! Not only did we make 100 different shades, we made 120 different shades of colors! They were so excited to beat their goal and create that many colors! They also discovered that black was black but we could make different whites! I told them that I wanted to display their colors to show people what what they learned. We debated how to display them. Group them by colors separately? Group them by light or dark? Like a rainbow? I thought they would prefer that one but they surprised me. They agreed on a circle with all of the color together. I couldn’t fit the browns and grays/white/black in so those were separate. The kids helped label and write out some of the things we did and noticed for our display to document our learning. Here is the finished display! This was a fun way to get started with how we will learn in our classroom! As they learn more about letters/sounds and writing they will be recording their own observations of what they see, think, wonder and discover! As the year goes on, you will notice them using their writing and reading skills more and more in natural, authentic ways! This is one of our big goals! Now that we have finished, I have started to notice some common interests to start our next inquiry and take all of our learning further! Stay tuned! Here are some other things that have been going on in our classroom! Learning to identify letters and sounds. We start the year learning one letter a day through our Journeys curriculum and how to write the capital letter properly using our Handwriting without tears curriculum. Here are some of the experiences set out for them during this time. The kids have learned how to partner read with letter books contains predictable text. They are learning letters, letter sounds, and the first three reading strategies: 1) Use your pointer finger to touch each word. 2) Look at the picture. It is a clue to figure out harder words. 3) Look at the first letter and say it’s sound when trying to figure out a word you don’t know. They are also learning to help each other and encourage each other as they read together. Here they try to create the letter by putting the lines down in the order they should make them when writing. Here, if they can name the letter and/sound, they are allowed to use it to build a castle. Of course they can ask friends for help if they don’t know it! More ways to practice proper formation of letters and develop fine motor skills to help with writing. Pebble crayons to encourage their pincher grip, texture to feel themselves making the letter on both the the grid and the chalkboard (both provide resistance. A whiteboard does not so does not work as well. We learned about Mat Man to help us with drawing people. We draw his parts and then add details to turn him into somebody. We keep writing at a minimum for now so that we don’t continue the bad writing habits they have developed. We focus on creating stories through pictures and telling oral stories. We read these books to help us. It helped us realize if we don’t know how to draw something, we can draw it “ish!” Dog-ish, violin-ish, etc. it gives them the freedom to try and helps those perfectionists not throw away every drawing they don't feel is perfect. We also read Beautiful Oops and Oomph! These taught us to work through mistakes and to add the destabilization a picture needs to tell a story in itself! These books really helped them learn to tell stories through pictures. Good Dog Carl is a good example of a story told through pictures. A lot of literacy learning has been happening and it’s only just beginning!

At the beginning of every year, our science curriculum has us exploring Science Inquiry Skills. It can be a tricky task. Science is huge! Not all scientist do the same things… but to explore this concept, I like to keep it hands-on and fun! We first learned that scientists use their senses to make observations. […]

A guide for IB PYP teachers because building an understanding of the learner profile traits can turn out to be a brain strain when thinking of all of the ATLs and how to get it all to blend perfectly in six weeks. So teachers, here is your guide to understanding, teaching and modelling the IB Learner Profile Traits with a few text suggestions, of course. After all, mentor texts are a powerful teaching tool for learners of all ages.

Here you can find song, download free skeleton printable, get ideas for activities and crafts to learn about bones and skeleton with your kindergarten class.

Teaching science in second or third grade? These force and motion activities, experiments, and lessons are easy to plan, NGSS aligned, and SO much fun! Your students will love the STEM challenges and the Science worksheets are so engaging.

I work really hard to listen and observe the kids to see what they are interested in. I like to use their interests to guide the curriculum...

Grade 3 science lessons and ideas for teachers... especially in BC! These lessons, ideas, projects, experiments, and inquiry, cover all topics and will have you ready to teach science to students in third grade.

Scientific method for kids no longer something that is impossible. kids should be accustomed to resolve all the problems with using the scientific method. Find out more here.

Use STEM engineering activities in elementary school as a fun, engaging, and meaningful way to tackle the Next Generation Science Standards.

We will look at the anchor standards in the responding strand, and how to put them to good use in the classroom through Arts-Based Inquiry.

STEM in Kindergarten? Absolutely! In this post, I share four easy activities that your kinders will thoroughly love.

Hi there, parents! Have an exciting treat in store for your young ones: free worksheets that make learning about day and night exciting! Dra...

I wanted to find a new self portrait project for the first week of school this year. I saw some inspiration on pinterest, but there were no directions on how to create it. So I took the best from the pics I saw and tried to recreate it my style. I used my 5 year old to practice this before my 3rd graders start this year. Here's how I did it... Step 1: Take a photo of your student as they stand so you get their Profile shot. Step 2: Airdrop or send the photo to your computer and print it out on a regular black/white printer on plain white paper. Then take a thin tipped black marker or sharpie and trace the outline. Step 3: Fill in the profile with a black marker. I used a black crayola marker, but I'm sure any black marker or crayon will do. You can stop below the neck or go all the way to the bottom of the picture. Step 4: Cut out the black very carefully. Step 5: Glue it onto blank white paper or cardstock . Step 6: Take a black pen or pencil and a ruler and draw straight lines to separate the background into sections. Step 7: Design as you wish. I'm going to have my students choose things all about them. It could be words to describe them, favorite things they enjoy...and filled with pictures and words to show them. I like the idea of the name only being on the back, so when parents come in they can guess which one is their child. So that's it! I plan to back these on black paper and hang in my classroom. Hope they all turn out great. I think this might be my new favorite back to school portrait art project!! If you like it or plan to use it, I'd love to see your pics and comments too!

A Kindergarten blog about effective teaching and making learning fun.

There are so many ways to approach self-portraits with children: observation, inspired by a particular artist, symbols of interests and activities, the list goes on. This time, I wanted to create an engaging, multi media

PRIMARY SCIENCE UNIT 2 - MAMMALS The second unit in my primary science series is finally here! We are so excited to learn all about mammals. We had so much fun in Unit 1 - learning all about the human body and our five senses , and now we are moving on to our next science unit. My stud

Provocations can be overwhelming. Let's take a look at some simple ideas for literacy provocations found in a Reggio-Inspired Preschool.

I work really hard to listen and observe the kids to see what they are interested in. I like to use their interests to guide the curriculum. I have found that when the curriculum stems from their interests, they naturally use the literacy, math, and 21st century skills needed as they explore and investigate. From the beginning of this year, the kids had been showing an interest in bird nests. Every time we went out on the playground, they were making nests. They also started gathering every stick we could find in order to build a more sturdy nest in our classroom since the one on the playground disappeared every day. Since we were still building a learning community in our room, I observed and put this on the back burner to revisit later, hoping the interest would hold. It did!! I put out an invitation to look closer and see what they noticed about the nests before we started building one. I also put out an invitation to create nests in our clay area. I predicted that maybe our nest inquiry would lead into an interest in birds so I also set out an invitation to learn more about birds to see what would happen. A few kids were interested and enjoyed it and learned from it, but not a majority of the kids. Birds would not be a large scale inquiry. I decided to stick with nests and see where it would take us. As we started a See/Think/Wonder Chart about nests, a picture of a bald eagle on its nest was noticed on our promethium board. All of a sudden, all of their questions and wonders were centered around these Bald Eagles. You could feel their excitement as we discussed and wondered about these amazing birds of prey! I asked if they wanted to explore these eagles further and they were very excited about the prospect! We watched many videos and live cams showing us eagles. The kids never tired of watching these! Based on their wonders, we created four expert teams. The Nest Experts (for those who were originally into the nest making), The Eagle Experts, The Eagle Family Experts, and The Eagle Prey Experts. I put out paints and clay in our Art Studio Area that would inspire them to use art to show what they notice about eagles. I loved how many tried to show that they noticed the curved beak of the eagle! The Eagle Experts learned that an eagle can get up to 43 inches high and have a 7 1/2 foot wing span! They measured out the width and height of the eagle and I drew it out for them. These birds can be massive! They were amazed at how big they were! They enjoyed seeing how much bigger the eagles wing spans were compared to them! They then looked closer at the feather colors and used ripped paper to create the long feathers of the wings and short feathers on its belly. They learned that they have curved beaks and sharp talons to hunt their prey with and learned the terms predator/prey and what they mean. The nest experts used the sticks we had been collecting and started out by throwing the sticks everywhere on a little branch I provided for them. They soon realized this wasn't going to work as all the sticks started falling off. I loved listening to them talk about it and problem solve. I heard terms and phrased such as "team" and "We won't give up!" They asked to look up a picture on my iPad. I had them look closely at an eagle nest to see what they noticed. They noticed the sticks went around the outside in a circle-like way and there was grass in the middle to make it soft. They then watched a video on the computer of an eagle making a nest. They noticed that she tried many places to put that one stick before she decided on where it would stay. When they went back to the nest, they were very careful on their placement of sticks! It was very hard and I still had to wire some pieces together to keep it from falling apart. This team learned how amazing it is that birds can make such strong nests with just two feet and a beak! They came to the conclusion that humans are not as good as birds when it comes to making a good sturdy nest, but we did our best and it turned out great, though fragile! They created a "Stop! Do not touch" sign. The Eagle Family Experts wanted to show what a typical eagle family looked like. They learned that the mom eagle is bigger than the dad eagle and that the mom have one to three eggs at a time. Both help keep the eggs warm and take care of/feed the babies. Two friends chose white clay to make an egg. One put a crack in it as though it were getting ready to hatch. After studying the colors on the birds, they used paper tubes to create the eagle family. They made sure the mother was bigger and that her and the father were brown with white heads and yellow beaks. The babies were fluffy gray with black beaks. They prey team used the computer and researched the type of animals that Eagles hunted and decided to use clay to show some examples. We created a web map in our room to organize our wonders and what we learned. Here are the finished displays to show what we had learned during our inquiry! The kids labeled and added the facts that we learned around our large eagle. It was amazing to see where the students took this! It was entirely based on their interests and changed with them! It took a little while to develop into a large scale inquiry. Not all of their interests go that far, and that is okay. This easily could have been a small scale nest inquiry done by a small group! I just had to listen to them, pay attention, and be willing to set out opportunities for them to explore further based on what I observed! So far, I have noticed two other very heavy interests shared by the class as a majority. Superheroes, and creating sounds and rhythm in different ways. I have noticed these interests since the beginning of the year and those interests continue to be strong, so while many other small scale inquiries may be going on, after the holidays, we may start one of these! I can't wait to see where the kids will take those interests! Here are some other things going on in our room! In math we are learning about making numbers up to ten in different ways to develop their number sense. They are also working hard to be able to write their numbers to 20. Some are even trying to get to 100! It took this friend 3 white boards to get to 80! Her goal is 100! A lot is going on literacy as kids are getting very excited about how much they have learned to read and write! In writing all of the kids are working on different writing skills from drawing a story to letter/sound correspondence to spaces and punctuation! In reading we are focusing on learning as many sight words as we can and noticing blends in words. In our science area, the kids have expressed a new interest in potions. I set up their first potion experiment for them. This station will continue through the holidays. In engineering, the blocks have been largely ignored in favor of K'nex! After reading the book "The Most Magnificent Thing," the kids have enjoyed creating their own magnificent things and showing the class what they do and how they work! Lots of creative and critical thinking are going on here! Stay tuned to see what will happen next in our classroom! You can never tell what it will be!

Study the human body anatomy with kids by making an anatomy model with these free printable life-size human body organs!

This product is an inquiry based activity related to the IB theme: Who we are - Unique me! The worksheet is a class activity that can be done in pairs and helps students to identify how we are all different and unique. The "Unique me" worksheet is a class activity that can be done in pairs.

As we approach Matariki, there are some wonderful Matariki crafts you can do with your children to celebrate.

Free set of printables to go along with Magnetic Tiles. Includes two levels of difficulty. Builds problem solving skills.

Bring relevance and inquiry into your three branches of government unit with these 5 easy lessons ideas.

Make an awesome origami boomerang that really does come back when you throw it.

Baby Moses Bible lesson for under 5s. Free printable lesson, games, craft and coloring page.

Construction themed activities and centers inspiration is HERE! Get out your planner, and let’s plan a ton of fun and engaging construction-themed activities your little learners (Preschool, Pre-k, and kindergarten)...

This post is part 1 in my inquiry series. To learn more about inquiry click through to see my many other posts about inquiry. If you are new to my blog,

These free community helper sort and classify mats are so much fun for kids learning about people who help us! These mats come in two styles, blank mats