It may sound sophisticated for a preschool child, yet multiple scholarly researches prove that inquiry based learning can be effective and engage preschool students as long as the class is well prepared and properly managed. At Wesley schools, we advocate inquiry based learning and support our teachers with abundant resources and teacher training programs to turn a traditional classroom into a learning lab for inquiry based learning.

At Wesley Schools, teachers are encouraged to add inquiries to a lesson wherever it may be applicable. In one way, inquiry concepts can easily be added to existing lesson plans by starting the lesson activity with an open-ended question, rather than definitions and explanations. In another way, teachers may also choose to model their explorations in curiosities and to speak their problem solving processes out loud. For example, they may say “I wonder why the character did that. I wonder why I usually find caterpillars in the same place. I am curious why there are more birds at one feeder and less at another.” There is no right or wrong way to inquire, as long as teachers may see it fit into the context and engage students to learn.