Welcome to my inquiry! My inquiry project focuses on outdoor/nature based education. Students nowadays are spending less time outdoors but from my personal and teaching experience, I have seen that when students have the opportunity to be outdoors, they absolutely love it! I want to provide my students with meaningful and authentic learning opportunities outdoors. Through this inquiry I hope to learn how to emotionally connect students (sense of place) to the natural environment.
This being a living inquiry, the best place to start it is wherever one finds oneself existentially. One looks inwardly into one’s own thoughts and feelings, while facing the world, noting how one reacts with conditioned thoughts and feeling responses. Usually we are too busy reacting that we do not stop to reflect and examine our response. Inquiry starts at this point of stop. From this place of stop, we question the necessity of “the way things are,” and address the possibility of seeing the world and the self differently and hence relating to the world differently. “What if I were to…?”
—Heesoon Bai, 2005, p. 47
Description: This assignment allows each student to experience the inquiry planning and implementation process. The purpose of this project is to “question the necessity of “the way things are,” [both in the way we teach in schools and in how we interpret the larger world] and address the possibility of seeing the world and the self differently, and hence relating to the world differently. We imagine otherwise possibilities when we ask, “What if I were to…?”” (Heesoon Bai, 2005, p. 47). The project will follow the Inquiry Cycle phases of Ask, Investigate, Create, Discuss and Reflect.
2 replies on “Outdoor/nature based inquiry”
Hello Gurreet,
Thank you for sharing your inquiry project plan. I am always inspired by Kindergarten teachers planning!
STAR: You have done an excellent job of connecting theory with your project plan. I really enjoy the inclusion of both the walking curriculum, as well as the incorporation of art activities inspired by Andy Goldworthy.
I also appreciate your note on explicit teachings of questioning. I think this is important that you have thought about this, as sometimes we assume that students will know how to ask a question, or make an observation when needed, when they may not know how.
WISH: It would be amazing to see a sample journal entry, and possibly how you might use it as assessment at the K level. Will they be responding to specific questions, or filling out a template more-so? Drawing pictures? Would love to see what this looks like!
INSPIRATION: tI am inspired by your incorporation of storytelling, and having the students come up with their own stories. A nice extension or method to the story creation, along with the art could be to do a story studio using pieces from nature. Students build the story using things they find outdoors, and can explain it to an adult and have them scribe, or film themselves explaining the story! This might fit nicely with their art creations as well.
Thanks again for sharing, this is such a neat idea!
Hi Ali,
Thanks for your feedback. As far as the sample goes – I don’t have a student sample but I usually have my students do journals on a regular basis. I give them a starter sentence that they copy then they draw pictures and/or write to go with the starter sentence. Writing is sometimes “invented” at this age but I encourage everything to help students gain confidence and basic skills of writing (e.g. holding a pencil!). I also ask each student when they are finished to show me and explain their drawings and/or read their writing, and I write what they say to me in a small empty space in their journal so we remember for the future. I would do something similar for this project. I would provide questions and/or templates but students would not be required to use them if they understand the task and have ideas of their own.
Thanks for the story studio idea! I love it! Something I will try for sure 🙂
Gurreet