Curriculum Framework

Overview

With the learner at the centre of this pedagogy, play is meant to be voluntary, spontaneous and intrinsically motivated. It supports knowledge development and critical thinking through engagement, experimentation, and joyful discovery. Play opens up a world of curiosity for learners and educators. It sets the stage for inquiry, which involves learner-led questioning and investigation of interests and information. Play and inquiry help learners connect to the world around them, inspiring wonder and reflection which leads to deeper, more critical thinking and problem-solving.

Elements

Play-based learning and inquiry-based learning are not separate nor the same approaches. That is, there can be play without inquiry and there can be inquiry without play, but frequently play and inquiry are one and the same. Play involves elements such as choice, wonder, and delight. Inquiry involves an iterative process of investigation, reflection, and communication.

Play and inquiry are suitable and can be impactful for all ages. In both, the learners construct and co-construct understanding, solve problems, create, and innovate. They have the benefit of fueling curiosity and offering purpose for the learner. Play and inquiry stimulate the internal explorer and exercise the cognitive muscles for discovery. Both can build knowledge and stimulate deeper understanding of the world.

Play and inquiry have the learner at the centre; however, when it relates to instructional design for specific learning goals, the educator will provide specific invitations, offer certain manipulatives, and support and scaffold through planned structured or guided processes that will facilitate learning.

STRATEGIES

Designing Playful Learning
Play is when learners construct meaning through provocations and open-ended experiences while creatively exploring the world around them. An engaging environment is deliberately designed to facilitate the development of a variety of skills, concepts, and competencies.

• Consider intention. Balance social, emotional, academic, exploration, oral language development, and physical well-being.
• Construct your environment. Provocations (written, verbal, or visual prompts that provoke learner action) activate prior knowledge and can be a springboard to new learning.
• Use a variety of materials. This may include toys, blocks, tools, natural items, and other available manipulatives and resources.
• Engage in and observe play. Ask questions to scaffold and extend learning.
• Collect evidence of learning for assessment and portfolios.

Designing Inquiry-based Learning
Inquiry focuses on learners’ curiosity and wonder and the questions that emerge from their exploration and investigations.

Designing learning starts with the gradual release of responsibility during the inquiry process. This approach supports a successful shift from educator-driven to learner-driven learning. This develops learner agency. Inquiry starts with an essential question, a question that:

• Requires critical thinking skills to answer.
• Sparks debate.
• Starts with Should…? Why…? What if…? How might we…?

RESOURCES

• Choice Time (2016) Heinemann, Renee Dinnerstein | This book is for Pre-K to Grade 2 educators. It provides guidance about how to set up choice-time centers that promote inquiry-based, guided play in the classroom.
• Inquiry Mindset (2019) Elevate Books Edu, Trevor Mackenzie | This book is for elementary educators. It provides guidance about how to leverage the wonderings of students and turn them into powerful learning opportunities; how to cultivate an inquiry mindset both as a teacher and in your students; and how to adopt an inquiry approach that results in authentic and inspiring learning.
• Dive into Inquiry (2019) Elevate Books Edu, Trevor Mackenzie | This book is for all educators. It provides guidance about effective approaches to learning the process for inquiry.
• Inquiry Based Early Learning Environments (2018) Redleaf Press, Susan Stacey | This book is for early childhood educators. It explores what it means to inquire and takes an in-depth look at children’s inquiry.
• Play and Playfulness | Professional Support Document, New Brunswick Curriculum for Early Learning and Child Care – English
• More than one way: An approach to teaching that supports playful learning | A pedagogy of play working paper
• Inquiry is Play: Playful Participatory Research (Voices) | naeyc
• How to Use Play for Learning | edutopia
• Inquiry-based Teaching | The Robertson Program, Inquiry-Based Teaching in Mathematics and Science
• Inquiry-based Learning | Queen’s University, Centre for Teaching and Learning
• Culturally Responsive Purposeful Play | Power Point Presentations