Today I met with a teacher who is new to inquiry-based learning. She is fabulous! Like many of us, she knows where she wants to be, she knows what vision she has for her class, but there is that big question - "How do we get there?"
When I arrived today the educators in the room had provided several pumpkins and gourds. I noticed that they had intentionally placed a basket of click cubes beside the pumpkins. I immediately was drawn here, and sat a listened to what was happening during play. As I observed, I tried to think about what my "intentionally interruption" should be. I am trying to hone my skills of listening and interrupting only to further learning. This is tough for me....I like to chat :) I also like to get in there and play, but I am learning that when I do that, I can sometimes stop or change the direction of play. I am working on it :)
So we can see below that these little explorers were beginning to measure using the cubes (YES!!! It is like they read their teachers' minds lol)
Hard at work lining up the cubes. It was interesting to note who included the stem as part of the height, and who only counted the orange pumpkin. |
I loved to watch as some of the students remeasured using the cubes, other students resorted to using their hand to compare (see pic below) and sometimes they just picked up 2 pumpkins and compared them visually. I left them on their own for a few minutes and asked them to come and find me when they were done.
Note the 3rd and 4th pumpkin from the left. There was good discussion about these 2. Which was taller? Should we include the stem as part of the pumpkin? |
We discovered quickly that it had to be quite heavy to register a weight. They explored putting different combinations of pumpkins on the scale to see if it would work. |
It was so wonderful to be back in the classroom laying on my belly taking notes and tons of pictures! I love my job :) As Early Educators we really do have the best job in the world!!
Chat again soon,
Carly
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