This week we started a new unit of inquiry. Our central idea is "Ecosystems contribute to life in many ways". It is a big handle for little kids to grasp. The word contribute is tricky and needs some acting to tease it's meaning out, and then there is that word -  ecosystems. Our Kindergarten kids complete an inquiry unit about habitats, so we find that the children usually bring forward the knowledge of what is a habitat. This provides us a great foundation to expand their understanding into ecosystems, which are much more involved and to do with relationships and causal affects between living and non-living parts.  

Once over the initial hurdle of introducing the central idea, we decided to use a strategy called "Think, Puzzle, Explore" from "Making Thinking Visible" by  Ritchhart, Church and Morrison (2011). This is very similar to a KWL chart, but I think it better models the tentative nature of our knowledge through its three questions and it invites student voice into the unit. 
1). What do I THINK I know about this unit? 
2). What PUZZLES me about this unit?  
3). What or how do I want to EXPLORE this unit?

We divided the class into 3 groups and placed an adult helper with each group (helpful for scribing with little ones). The groups then had 10 minutes to respond to the question on a poster. They then rotated so each child had the chance to respond to each question. I had found a picture diagram of an ecosystem. It was a simple line-sketch with no words of a deer in the woods, by a clearing, with bushes, grasses and trees, the sun and a rain cloud. There was even an underground river. The whole picture was marked with directional arrows between the elements. I placed this picture at the centre of each poster. I think the highlight of the lesson was when one lad, pointing at the picture, exclaimed, "But how does it all connect? How does it all go together?"  - Now we were ready to begin. 

I think it is all too easy for us to underestimate the power of a student's voice in their own learning program.  We have such firm ideas about what children this age should or shouldn't be learning. We have curriculum documents, scope and sequences and programs of inquiry to get through. Then there is even Great Aunt Mabel telling us what we should be teaching. In all of this, do we take enough time to ask the students what they would like to learn? Aside from the documented gains in student motivation that come from heeding student voice, today I discovered another important reason to listen closely. 

A new child in our classroom had commented randomly on her first day: "I really, really, want to learn all about humpback whales." This was in the middle of our unit about How We Express Ourselves and the central idea was "Time and Culture affect Stories." In this extremely narrative unit where fiction was the focus, I just could not see a viable entry into the factual world of humpback whales. However, I knew that our Sharing the Planet unit was coming up soon and I hoped that I could offer her an oceans inquiry group. 

This was the very first week of the new unit. I was searching in the resource room for non-fiction readers when I came across a set called, "The Life of the Humpback Whale"! No kidding! It was the perfect reading level for her as well. As her  guided reading group gathered into a circle for an introduction to non-fiction texts, she snuck a sideways grin up at me. "Miss Renee, did you think about me when you chose this book? Are we reading this because I said I wanted to learn about humpback whales?" It would have taken a lot the shake the grin of that one little girls face. She wasn't just the new girl anymore, she knew she belonged because she matters in her teachers' mind. Isn't relationship the foundation of all learning after all?