Blog Post 1 - Starting to think about direction

It's always hard to know where to start with a new project. The task for this blog post was pretty open ended so I started out by choosing a topic that was on my mind while reading the book, "Why School?: How Education Must Change When Learning and Information are Everywhere" by Will Richardson. As I read through his ideas I found myself wondering how I could implement this type of change in my current teaching assignment which is Kindergarten. As a teacher with an intermediate background it is easier for me to visualize these ideas in an intermediate setting. It was harder for me (at first) when the students are also learning to read and write. I started out searching online for "Inquiry based learning in Kindergarten" and was relieved to see that some of what was listed was actually familiar to me. The phrase "play based learning" is one that a lot of kindergarten teachers use so I was pleased to see that play based learning is part of the inquiry process. I decided that I would like to research the inquiry process as it can be applied to the world of kindergarten (and early primary) including how technology can be used during the process. In order to start sorting my thoughts I decided to create a flowchart. I wanted to focus on a few aspects of what I know about inquiry based learning and connect them to the core competencies found in the BC ed plan. I have to admit that I had a lot of fun making this chart and probably spent more time on it than I should have given the timeline of the week.

I would like to start gathering blogs from other kindergarten teachers who are talking about inquiry based learning. I realize that seeing other people's work and reading their experiences is the best way for me to learn. Seeing real examples also makes it much more likely that I will implement some of these ideas in my own class. This topic is important to me because I believe that students need to know how to find and evaluate information. The also need to be able to identify and solve problems, evaluating their own work along the way and being willing to make changes as needed. As a very new kindergarten teacher I feel that diving in to this topic will strengthen my own teaching right now as well as make it easier for me to suggest collaboration ideas with primary teachers when working in the library.