Planting the seeds of inquiry learning

To start our term in Autahi we have been learning about plants as Spring is a great time to start planting. This week on the blog we will walk you through part of our Inquiry process and show how we encourage learners to use their knowledge to support their learning about the world around them.

We often try to start from a place of knowledge when seeing where an inquiry might take us. Children have experiences and learning that helps to inform them about how the world works. This helps us to see what knowledge our learners are bringing with them so that we can build upon that foundation. Here is an example of what we already knew about the different parts of a plant.

Then we did an activity to build up some of the vocabulary around the names of some of the different parts of a plant. This will prove useful in upcoming activities as we progress our learning.

  

Next we planned out the steps we would need to take in order to start planting some plants of our own. First we used pictures and oral language to share our plans and then used that in our Writing session as the basis of our story for the day.

The final step this week was to get out and plant the seeds. The weather was beautiful outside and was perfect for putting our ideas into action. Check us out!

Throughout this process we have been recording questions that have come from our Autahi learners that will help drive the next learning experience in this inquiry. During the initial knowledge building phase there was some debate around whether all plants actually had roots. 

Exploring their own questions helps keep the inquiry child led and lets us focus on finding ways to find out. 

We are so excited to have our hands in the dirt and will be diligently watering our plants so that they can grow big enough for us to find out if they all will have roots.