Mollie Kuhn - Blog Post 5 "Utilizing Inquiry Based Learning"

Just this week we have been reading Bear Snores On  by Karma Wilson in my classroom as part of the the Guiding Readers curriculum by Deanna Jump and Deedee Wills. This story prompted many "wonderings" that my students were interested in which went right along with the Inquiry Based Literacy Standards for Kindergarten, especially standard 1. My students knew a lot about bears already, but we learned many new facts which added to their schema. We made a tree map of the facts about bears. Students used this tree map to create an informational book about bears in which they had to write complete sentences using the tree map we created as a class. 

In addition to this story, we read other books about bears throughout the week including Corduroy by Don Freeman. This started a discussion about the difference between real bears and teddy bears. We made a Venn Diagram of how they were the same and different, which led to a discussion about living and non-living things. The children brainstormed characteristics of living and non-living things, which led them to wonder about other things that might be living or non-living. They were very interested in the fact that plants were living things! We sorted things in our classroom, other animals, and objects that were living or non-living based on the characteristics we came up with. In order to help us find our information, we read other books from the library and used the internet to find out what these characteristics were, which goes right along with standard 2.1 to explore texts and make connections. 

As part of our discussion on living things, the topic of hibernation was brought up since the bear in the story is hibernating. Some of the children already knew what it was, but we took it a step further in our research to find out what their body actually does when they are hibernating. We read many other nonfiction books, as well as Time for Sleep by Denise Fleming which talks about other animals that hibernate. I assessed their learning through a sorting activity where students had to show which animals hibernated and which ones did not.  As we discussed which animals hibernate and those that do not, the children began to wonder and ask questions about the animals that did not hibernate. By doing more reading and research, we found out that some animals migrate to warmer climates and some store food for the winter. Still others do not prepare at all and have to look for food in the cold weather. As a culminating activity, the children created dens or burrows for animals to hibernate in during the winter. We used marshmallows and toothpicks for the children to build the homes for the small plastic animals we had. They had to be sure the animal would fit and have room to sleep and stay warm. They took pictures of their dens to display on a bulletin board to showcase their learning in the school. 

Throughout this study, the children were able to wonder and find out about a topic of interest to them. They were able to talk about their thoughts and communicate what they were learning through thinking maps and writings, as mentioned in standard 3.  We use thinking maps all of the time in the classroom so they could see the connection of how to communicate their findings and write them down. They are then able to share their learning with others and reflect on what they had learned throughout the process, as mentioned in standard 4. I really enjoyed guiding my students through this inquiry based learning project. Projects like these prompt more discussions and questions about topics. I look forward to January when the students are interested to learn about more animals, particularly the ones that live in the Arctic.