Cardboard Airplanes: Authentic Ways to Foster Curiosity about Geography in Early Childhood

Autor/inn/en	Strachan, Stephanie L.; Block, Meghan K.; Roberts, Scott L.
Titel	Cardboard Airplanes: Authentic Ways to Foster Curiosity about Geography in Early Childhood
Quelle	In: Social Studies and the Young Learner, 29 (2016) 2, S.17-20 (4 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1056-0300
Schlagwörter	Geography Instruction; Kindergarten; Young Children; Preschool Teachers; Early Childhood Education; Teaching Methods; Play; Discovery Learning; Information Seeking; School Libraries; Learning Activities; Computer Uses in Education; Reading Aloud to Others; Internet; Information Sources + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Geography education; Geography lessons; Geografieunterricht; Frühe Kindheit; Pre-school education; Preschool education; Erzieher; Erzieherin; Kindergärtnerin; Vorschulerziehung; Vorschule; Early childhood; Education; Frühkindliche Bildung; Frühpädagogik; Teaching method; Lehrmethode; Unterrichtsmethode; Spiel; Entdeckendes Lernen; Informationserschließung; School library; Schulbibliothek; Lernaktivität; Computernutzung; Information source; Informationsquelle
Abstract	Young children are naturally inquisitive, and teachers often invite them to question, challenge, and create to expand their ever growing knowledge base. This article describes an inspiration one kindergarten teacher had when she overheard two children in her class discussing their recent experiences at an airport. The students were sharing some of the places they saw on the arrival boards and were pretending to board a plane headed to a distant destination. One of the children asked if the class could have a plane for the classroom to use during free play. Without hesitation, the teacher constructed a plane from cardboard boxes and the next morning the classroom was filled with energy, excitement, and questions about geography, and travel to other places on the globe as they looked at the plane. This article demonstrates how free play coupled with a teacher's guidance and encouragement can become an important activity through which children can explore a wide range of topics such as geography, transportation, reading aloud related texts, and speech. Using a simple cardboard plane, this kindergarten teacher created a space for young children to collaboratively explore and address what places such as South Korea or the Rocky Mountains looked like, as well as to learn about types of clothing, food, transportation, and shelters commonly seen in those places. To expand their sources of information beyond simple atlases the teacher helped the children request informational texts from the school librarian about particular places around the world. As a class, they constructed a letter detailing the types of information they were interested in, including how the children in these places got to school each morning, what types of shelters they lived in, what the climate was like, and what types of money they used. After a week into this unit one child asked if she could use Google Earth on an iPad to locate her grandma's house in Baton Rouge. Still others used the app to explore their neighborhoods and the neighborhoods of their classmates. (ERIC).
Anmerkungen	National Council for the Social Studies. 8555 Sixteenth Street #500, Silver Spring, MD 20910. Tel: 800-683-0812; Tel: 301-588-1800; Fax: 301-588-2049; e-mail: membership@ncss.org; Web site: http://www.socialstudies.org
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01