Facilitating Academic Excellence Through Inquiry and Play

By Andrea Strachan, Vice Principal Elementary School, Lakeside Campus

The Canadian International School (CIS) early years classrooms (ages 3 – 6) are inspirational and vibrant learning spaces that utilize years of research about how children learn best. We base our programme on the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (IB PYP) with an inquiry and play-based approach – an approach at the heart of substantial research documenting the importance of play in young children’s healthy development and learning.

Our purpose-built school facility fully supports our inquiry and play-based programme. All our classrooms are organised around learning “pods”.  These are large, open, shared spaces where teachers can set up hands-on learning centres organised in ways that support learning through inquiry and play. For example, in numeracy our students explore volume and capacity concepts through “hands on” waterplay stations. This approach allows us to work with small groups of students and to differentiate teaching to suit the academic needs of each learner.

Inquiry and play-based learning at CIS does not mean a chaotic approach to learning or a lack of guidance by teachers.  Instead, it is a balance between a classroom rich in child-initiated play and focused learning guided by our teachers.  In all child-initiated play activities, our teachers are actively present.  They monitor, engage, and where needed, guide the children’s play, answering their questions, building on their ideas and introducing new content and concepts as appropriate.

To find out more information about CIS’ inquiry and play-based learning programme, please visit www.cis.edu.sg.