Inquiry Projects: catching and sustaining ideas with children

Inquiry Projects: catching and sustaining ideas with children

Inquiry-based learning is an experiential approach where children explore real-world problems, ideas, and questions driven by their curiosity. Educators are attuned and listen to children's theories and wonderings, creating contexts and environments that foster investigation and exploration of their ideas.

Balancing intentional planning with responsiveness creates space for sustained inquiry, deeper thinking, and shared curriculum decision making, with children positioned as active co-researchers in learning.

This training will not only explore the cycles within an inquiry project, it will also offer opportunities to strengthen practice as a co-researcher alongside children. It is designed for educators who are ready to move beyond activity-based planning and towards a more responsive, conceptual and inquiry-led approach to curriculum. We'll cover the following topics:

• Noticing and Catching Ideas - Concepts, working theories, and the value of slow pedagogy

• Listening, Responding, and Meaning Making - Gathering data, designing a context for investigation and research, revisiting

• Designing for Inquiry: Environment and Documentation - Making ideas visible, questions that invite thinking and relaunching to sustain ideasShifting beyond art activities and exploring arts practice through children’s ideas

A comprehensive hard-copy learning booklet is included

"Our expectations of the child must be very flexible and varied. We must be able to be amazed and to enjoy, like the children often do. We must be able to catch the ball that the children throw us, and toss it back to them in a way that makes the children want to continue the game with us, developing, perhaps, other games as we go along”

Tizianna Filippini, Pedagogista, Reggio Emilia

Presented by Ellen Carney

Ellen is deeply passionate about fostering curiosity and creativity through inquiry-based learning. With a strong focus on social justice, reflection, and inclusive practice, Ellen supports teams to build thoughtful partnerships grounded in care, dialogue, and shared responsibility. Her work invites educators to think deeply about belonging, equity, and the ways learning communities can be both reflective and socially conscious. Ellen is an experienced KGlearning Approach practitioner.