Overview Link to this section
Our youngest learners come to us with a natural sense of wonder and curiosity. They construct their own knowledge through exploration and asking questions. We want to create many opportunities for making observations, asking questions, seeking answers, and exploring topics that matter to students. Preschoolers are natural explorers, ready to understand the world around them. Guide them through the process of questioning, investigating, and designing solutions to personal, community, and global issues. The thinking and questioning is the focal point.
Supporting Inquiry Link to this section
Use these practices, and practices like these, to support student thinking and academic ownership
Supporting critical thinking in early childhood
Critical thinking is an essential life skill. We use critical thinking skills every day. They help us to make good decisions, understand the consequences of our actions and solve problems. In Elenn Galinsky’s book, “Mind in the Making: The seven essential life skills every child needs,” the author explains the importance of teaching children critical thinking skills. A child’s natural curiosity helps lay the foundation for critical thinking. This article discusses the ways to encourage critical thinking: The Importance of Critical Thinking for Young Children - Early Childhood Development
Visual Thinking Strategies
VTS builds thinking in a student-centered, teacher guided way. Students speak and listen to one another. All ideas are equally valued, using norms of listening and speaking. VTS uses art and photos that highlight descriptive, culturally rich stories. Visual content is open to interpretation. Students listen and respond to the ideas of others, laying the foundation for multiple perspectives and thinking flexibly about ideas, respect and differences.
Student Artifacts Link to this section
KWL (Know, Want to Know, Learned)
KWL charts are graphic organizers that help students organize information before, during, and after a unit or a lesson. They can be used to engage students in a new topic, activate prior knowledge, share unit objectives, and monitor students’ learning.
Standards-Based Skills: Students will be able to...
- Demonstrate curiosity and raise simple questions about objects and increased ability to raise questions events in their environment.
- Observe objects and events in the environment and describe them.
- Use language to communicate with others in familiar social situations for a variety of basic purposes, including describing, requesting, commenting, acknowledging, greeting, and rejecting.
- Attend to English oral language, in both real and pretend activity, relying on intonation, facial expressions, or the gestures of the speaker.
- Use accepted language and style during communication with both adults and children.
- Use language to construct short narratives that are real or fictional.
- Understand and use increasingly complex and longer sentences, including sentences that combine two phrases or two to three concepts to communicate ideas.
These standards are taken from Pre-Kindergarten standards found within the Preschool Learning Foundations volume 1 and volume 3 (Language and Literacy, Science, ELD)
Reflection Questions Link to this section
- How can inquiry develop academic ownership and honor students' experiences?
- What does inquiry currently look like in your practice? What is working well for students? How do you know?
- What are the implications for your own practice? What will you do first?
This page was last updated on May 22, 2023