Useful Books or Articles to Read or Look into:
The Hundred Languages of Children by Carolyn Edwards, Lella Gandini and George Forman
This book focuses on the Reggio Emilia experience. It talks to the many different ways which children explore the world around them and can express their understanding. Children show understanding in many more ways than just speaking and writing. There is a huge connection to the arts and hands on activities. You as an educator need to set up an inviting environment where children feel comfortable and able to question not only their peers, their understanding and you as well.
Back to the Basics of Teaching and Learning Thinking the World Together by David W. Jardine, Patricia Clifford and Sharon Friesen
This book looks at the way we have interpreted theories of child development and the traditional ways of teaching. It talks about real life examples of ways to create experiences with children to deepen their understanding of a variety topic areas.
Designs for Living and Learning: Transforming Early Childhood Environments by Deb Curtis and Margie Carter
This book talks about how you can transform your learning space from one of order and structure to one that works to create a natural sense of wonder. It has photos to provoke and inspire educators to set up their rooms in a different way. It talks about ways to help the children feel connected to their space and the nature.
This article walks you through a step by step example of an exploration into inquiry of rocks. They talked about where they went for items and that they invited in experts in the field to talk directly with the students. It also touched on the different ways that learning takes place. This links back to a Reggio approach to children communicating and learning in over a 100 different ways.
Inquiry-based Learning: Three Alberta Schools That Know What It Takes
This article highlights how three school in Alberta are using inquiry-based learning to engage students. It highlights the small differences that exist between each location. They are also apart of an important Galileo Educational Network that is used to help them ensure they have a variety of teachers, student teachers and experts to talk with and bounce ideas off. This type of work should not be taken up alone as it is very extensive.
Alberta Learning, Focus on Inquiry: A Teacher's Guide to Implementing Inquiry-based Learning
This is a pdf that can be printed and consulted as needed. It is a well laid out road map on how to go through the process of planning and inquiry experience. It outlines in a step by step process what to do and has questions for you to think about during the planning process. There is even a space that asks you to reflect on the experience as to what worked well and what you may want to think about facilitating in a different way.
This document speaks to the direct co-relation of play based learning and inquiry learning in Ontario Kindergarten classrooms. It provides information on how to share with parents the importance of play.
Useful Sites to Visit for Examples In action or Explanations:
Videos:
learning is. It takes a child centred approach to
the information and what this type of learning
looks like. Project-based learning takes time.
The video is a quick overview and talks briefly
about the benefits to children. it talks about the
another curriculum but we connect it to our
curriculum or program of studies easily.
