Starting Inquiry-based Science in the Early Years

Look, talk, think and do

Sue Dale Tunnicliffe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317676782
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

Young children are intuitive scientists. This book builds on their inherent curiosity and problem solving as they move forward in their scientific thinking. Science develops from early beginnings and a solid foundation in the early years is essential for their future learning and engagement with the subject. Starting Inquiry Based Science in the Early Years shows you how you can support children's emerging scientific skills by working with them and scaffolding their inquiries as they experiment, hypothesise and investigate building on their natural curiosity.

Full of practical advice, it offers a wide range of scientific activities that can be carried out in partnership with young children. Each activity presents a challenge for the child to solve by thinking and talking through their ideas and then carrying out their own investigations. This invaluable guide focuses on helping children to follow their own line of inquiry and supporting them in mastering the skills and vocabulary they need in order to do this. Features include:

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• An explanation of the key skills children need to acquire and practical ideas for developing these;

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• Useful lists of relevant vocabulary and everyday resources;

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• Cue questions to encourage children's thinking skills;

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• Cross-curricular links to show how the activities support early literacy and mathematics.

Providing a rich bank of resources for promoting scientific experiences and learning, this highly practical book will help you ensure that the children in your care have the strong foundations they need to become confident, successful scientists in the future.

Chapter 1 Introduction: format of the book

DOI: 10.4324/9781315771908-1

This book focuses on structured partnership activity between an adult and an early learner, but with a difference. The objective is to use a particular approach of posing a challenge via a cue question to the child. This is not only to provide a stimulus for them to explore their own designed science experience but to scaffold the thinking of a participating child through further questions and often with the outcome in the initial question. For example, “Is the moon always visible at night?” whereby the child has to plan a strategy to answer the question. Children have to learn certain skills first of all and then hone them with practice and learn to see where they can apply these skills, of thought and actions, to a new situation. The partner can assist them in this learning with the appropriate cue as they master the skill or work out their thoughts. This is difficult to do but try. Bear in mind the words of the Russian psychologist Vygotsky, “What a child can do with assistance today she will be able to do by herself tomorrow” (1987, p.87).

The activities in the book provide not only a starting point but also often a finishing outcome and the child has to work out how to proceed from the start to the outcome. Talking to the learner as s/he progresses in planning and doing the actions to meet the challenge can reveal much about the previous knowledge and experience of the learner and their ability to verbalise their thoughts and skills at problem solving. Using open questions and ‘push back’ questions (Chin, 2007) can prompt the child further in developing their thinking and reasoning.

The partner adult often needs to set up the items to show the starting point and the end point when they want to create a learning opportunity. Thus, in the case of the magnet activity discussed in Chapter 2, the start would be a pile of wrapped items and the end point would be selecting one wrapped item from a pile of other wrapped items. The one item could be labelled ‘magnet’ and the child told it is a magnet. In the case of some studies, e.g. on weather, photographs of an end point might be used, or of a starting point to stimulate looking, talking, thinking and doing. Thus learners are encouraged to work out how they can use the starting point and reach the given outcome. In this partnership activity (which is not fully structured) because you are encouraging their thinking by asking cue questions as appropriate and introducing appropriate cue questions, you should not tell them what to do. The relevant vocabulary is provided, as well as the skills and experiences they need before they can tackle the given activity.

Specific instructions to achieve the outcome are not given, rather the emergent scientist will need to think and do the investigation as they see fit, with some teacher-led cue questions, provided during activities. It is envisaged that the activities and dialogue are conducted one to one or adult to several learners. However, an adult can adapt the strategies for their own purposes and the whole activity should s/he wish.

Each chapter starts with an introduction followed by children’s real ideas about the topic. These are very short case histories of children with whom I have worked and their responses in investigations or challenges about the topic of the chapter.

The aims of the activities follow and should you have to write learning plans when working with children these can be useful for initial, overall planning and monitoring of a child’s learning. A list of vocabulary that can be used when adults are working with these learners is included, which some adults have found very useful in assessing progress. Before an investigation can really be carried out there are certain skills that a learner needs, such as being able to pick up items, pour water, and such foundation experiences are given so you can ensure that the learner has such skills. In a planned learning situation it is useful to have things to use in investigations available so a list of possibly useful items is included. After the introductory three chapters actual activities or challenges are suggested, in particular topics that in my experience interest early learners: ourselves, other animals, plants and fungi, pushes and pulls, changes and outside. Each activity is introduced with a start or cue question for the adult to use to start the investigative process. Additionally some ‘throw back’ questions prompt the learner to the next move. We don’t tell them or show them; many of us find this difficult. Please try and suggest further action through dialogue. Finally, a brief summary of expected outcomes is given.

Assessment may be an important part of your work so assessment suggestions and record charts are provided, as well as suggestions for recording in some form if this is a feature of your work.

References

• Chin, C. (2007) Teacher Questioning in Science Classrooms: Approaches that Stimulate Productive Thinking. Journal of Research in Science Teaching. 44(6) 815–843.
• Vygotsky, L. (1987) Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, p. 87.

Chapter 2 Observations and actions – play: starting learning science

DOI: 10.4324/9781315771908-2

Introduction

Learning science begins with babies looking around, gradually acquiring manipulative skills they can use for a definite action and then play. Learning is gradual and begins with intuitive ideas but is consolidated by noticing a phenomenon, talking about it, and thinking about it again and investigating where appropriate and sharing with someone else. Learning does not occur in a linear manner but in a constructive way, sometimes referred to as a spiral curriculum context, being developed increasingly in more depth (Bruner, 1977). The starting point for science is observation (Sylva et al., 1980). We strive as educators to encourage young children and their associated adults, parents, relatives, other carers and teachers, to share their observations, talk about them and increase their own self-esteem and literacy. Moreover, children are intuitive scientists (Gopnik, 2009).

Children, we now know, need to talk, and to experience a rich diet of spoken language in order to think and learn. Reading, writing and number may be acknowledged as curriculum ‘basics’ but talk is the true foundation for teaching.

(Alexander, 2008, p. 9)

However, when engrossed in activity children do not necessarily talk. Very young children who play do not talk, but they do play and investigate whilst they play. When being involved in imaginative activities, they might tell the story out loud of what, for instance, their Lego figures or toy cars or dolls are doing and provide an oral narrative. On other occasions when they are involved in observations and investigations they often do not talk (Tizard and Hughes, 1984); sometimes they say a statement out loud that is really a hidden question.

Furthermore, it is now accepted that there is an intimate link between language and thought and thus the cognitive development of a child is affected to a considerable extent by the nature, context and forms of language, which s/he hears and uses (Halliday, 1993). We now recognise that play is crucial to the development of a child (Moyles, 1989) and that society should promote awareness of and work to change the attitudes towards play. Whitbread at al. (2012) point out that play is the work of children and essential for intellectual achievement and emotional wellbeing. Learning through experience is developed in both spontaneous and directed play and introducing inquiry-based science fits well into extended play activities progressing to challenges to solve. Play, after all, is often very much problem solving (Moyles, 1989). ‘Just playing’, is a phrase that has been used in a derogatory sense by educators, and some parents and other adults, unfamiliar with early years learners. Parents who recollect their own education assume this is how it should be for all as their own usually secondary stage experience means they fail to understand the essential and critical values that link a child’s learning through play.

The starting point for the learning of science and engineering, at this early age, is play. As such these early learners are making observations and asking questions, albeit to themselves and devising their own strategies for eliciting an answer. Such working out by the child is them asking themselves hidden questions even though in the earliest years their thoughts are not verbalised. The only evidence we, as observers, have is we can see the actions of the children, which are thus the expressed model of their science investigation. Moreover, such learning occurs in the immediate environment of the child, in his/her community, with the people with whom s/he spends their time, and begins long before any formal educational interaction. Starting children on their path in learning science as in other subjects is a community endeavour. These places of potential learning are where they live and the immediate environment outside. In these locations children witness everyday activities such as cooking, cleaning, washing, various activities with materials such as textiles, wood, clay, as well as identifying and being involved with basic life processes such as moving, breathing, eating, excreting and the human activities associated with the life processes and beyond. Children are immersed in their environment, including natural structures or built, human constructs such as their village or adjacent areas, which all contain various amounts of technology, maths and science. This can range from a simple cooking vessel being used on an open fire to mobile phones; from natural vegetation to a manicured garden and the everyday non-built areas. Moreover, the natural environment comprises physical, geological and biological matter, and features of this, such as rocks, plants and watercourses, may be observed. Additionally, the culture and particular uses of science and technology by the community with whom the children live are evident and noticed, pointed out by members of the community, for instance, buildings, transport and water sources.

As children acquire early language they begin to label phenomena. This naming is an inherent human need (Bruner, Goodnow and Austin, 1956; Markman, 1989). Additionally, young children ask questions incessantly when given the opportunity (Tough, 1977), a behaviour that often disappears in the formal education environment where class triadic dialogue takes over. In order to talk and express themselves, children will need to know the relevant vocabulary. If they do not know the word they will use the ‘nearest fit’. My eldest grandson noticed the reflections of trees on the flat surface of a body of water, across which a boat was passing. He remarked on the shadows of the trees, not knowing the word ‘reflection’. In England a curriculum for the early years is laid out in a government document (DfE, 2012).

Becoming an emergent scientist

Children learn their science as they learn about the phenomena in the world in which they live. Emergent scientists acquire the necessary basic concepts to enable them to become participant inquirers in science through active involvement with their everyday environment and the adults around them. This gives the learners experiences and provides opportunities for them to acquire experiences, whilst you introduce skills and vocabulary. But when children construct understanding for themselves it is their understanding of their world. It is salutary for we educators to bear in mind when considering formal teaching strategies for very young children to learn more about science that school science generally assumes that, for any scientific issue, there is a single valid scientific conception, so that other ideas that do not agree with it are alternative conceptions, often called misconceptions. Personal knowledge that has been acquired through the child’s own ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: format of the book
• 2 Observations and actions – play: starting learning science
• 3 Starting science, recording and assessing early investigations
• 4 Foundation skills: shape, space and measure
• 5 Living things: ourselves
• 6 Living things: other animals
• 7 Other living things: plants and fungi
• 8 Pushes, pulls and bounces
• 9 Changes
• 10 Outside
• Index