In the months leading up to my two-week practicum I had been learning all about the term inquiry; however I was still confused on how this would take form in the classroom. This past week, I had the pleasure of observing inquiry in action in our Kindergarten classroom and as a result I now feel more comfortable with the concept. Currently, our Kindergarten class is focusing on the transdisciplinary theme of who we are, with the central idea of healthy choices influence well-being. Our “K” class was introduced to the difference between a statement and a question as well as the question words of who, what, where, when, why and how. We immediately followed this lesson with an activity where students were asked in small groups to come up with questions on the topics of exercise, food, personal care, and relaxation (the teacher would scribe these questions).
I gained multiple insights when observing and participating with the students in this exercise. Firstly, I learned the importance of ensuring that students had enough time to formulate their thoughts. For many students I learned that it was beneficial for them to express their ideas and thoughts out loud to their group members. It was usually after this thought process that they would then be able to generate a specific question. Yet often they spoke at the same time so I had to find a balance between not curbing their enthusiasm but ensuring they took turns raising their questions. Secondly, not all students were able to formulate a question verbally; instead they would draw a picture of their question. This highlighted the importance of visual representation and the importance of offering elements of choice as well as different mediums for our students to engage. Lastly, this activity strengthened my beliefs on the importance of group work. In my opinion hearing their fellow peers generate questions helped the other students to craft up their own questions. One interesting take-away from this activity that I noticed was that of the question words, “why” was most commonly used by the students when crafting a question. It made me wonder why this word was used so often. Perhaps this will become clearer as we go deeper into the inquiry process. Overall, this activity helped the students to become inquirers, thinkers and communicators all qualities reflected in the IB learner profile!
