Photo by Dragos Gontariu on Unsplash

This last week our class went to visit George Jay Elementary school and talk with Rebecca Bathurst-Hunt, a kindergarten teacher there.  The focus of this visit was to learn more about inquiry learning in primary grades.  I found it interesting to hear Rebecca talk about how she incorporates inquiry into her kindergarten class as what we have learned about inquiry so far seems to pertain more to older grades.  I liked how she explained that a good place to start is to simply begin a lesson or unit with a question, rather than just stating to the students what they will be learning about.  This automatically sparks the students’ curiosity and gets them thinking about different possibilities for learning.  This is a great base level for beginning to guide students to learn about inquiry without overwhelming them.  My biggest concern about doing inquiry with younger grades has been wondering how they would know how to actually navigate an inquiry and know what kinds of questions to ask and what direction they need to go to complete their project.  Rebecca explained how she scaffolds inquiry by starting with a more structured project at the beginning of the year where the whole class inquires about one question, and she guides the process.  Then she slowly begins to give the students opportunity to take more control over their learning through different projects over the year until they are ready to do their own inquiry.  I love how she had little areas throughout the classroom with different set ups that connected with their inquiry to engage students with further learning based on their curiosity and promote provocatios.  I also like how she really stressed honoring the students learning by providing opportunities to showcase it.

Another thing that stood out for me was how she talked about her “teacher heart.”  This is where she hold her values as a teacher and decides what she feels is most important for learning.  As she said, whenever she is approached with new buzz words, programs, technology etc, she first reflects on whether it aligns with her teacher heart before she decides if she will use it or not.  She encouraged us all to decide what our teacher heart is, and \i think it is a great way to make sure you hold to your values as an educator.