Inquiry

We did a class inquiry project last week in all of Kindergarten. I know that some teachers, especially primary ones, may be resistant to the idea of "inquiry" and its abstract nature, however, starting off with a simple topic like the one we chose made it a lot easier. We are fortunate to have 1:1 iPad minis in our classrooms. They serve as a great tool for projects like these that require recording observations and collecting research, but maybe most importantly for creating a presentation to show what we learned. The topic we chose for our first inquiry project was "favorite color." I posed the question, "What is the favorite color in our class?" (because what kindergartener can't get behind that?) and the students took videos of themselves recording their "conjectures," or predictions. Then, when I asked them how we could figure out the answer to this question, they suggested ideas for how to collect the data all on their own. We took a survey of the class and tallied the answers. Students then revised their conjectures with another video recording. At the end of the project, students produced conclusions of what they learned. For example, there were an equal amount of people that liked yellow and orange, or, more girls liked green than boys. All of the steps of this process were put into a digital book in the Book Creator app. Find out more about Book Creator in the "Make it Tech-y" tab of my blog. I love seeing all of the amazing things Kindergarten teachers can do with inquiry in their classrooms. I knew that I needed to start off simple, but my hope is to build this practice onto bigger and better topics!