The 4-year-olds in Rebecca Wilson's prekindergarten class in central Iowa listened attentively to the reading of Jan Brett's "The Mitten," a Ukrainian folk tale. In the story, a little boy loses a mitten in the snow in the woods. A badger, a hedgehog, a bear, a fox, and an owl crawl into the mitten, stretching it larger and larger.
When she finished reading, Ms. Wilson (coauthor of this article) asked the children questions focusing on preliteracy skills. What animals were in the story? What happened first? Then what happened? As an active discussion arose from those questions, one little girl asked, "Do all those animals live in our woods?" Her classmates initially weighed in excitedly, but eventually everyone quieted down and turned to the teacher, expectantly.
The student's question might seem simple. This was central Iowa, after all, and the "woods" she was referring to is a small woodland area in a nearby county park. Those unfamiliar with how young children develop thinking abilities would probably have said, "No bears and probably no badgers in our woods." Instead, the teacher said, "Hmmm. That's a good question. What do you think?" That moment determined the focus of the classroom for the next eight weeks.
There are many philosophies in education about how young children learn and the best way to teach them. Some are rooted in early work in the fields of psychology and pedagogy. More recently, however, new technology—particularly medical technology such as CAT, MRI, and fMRI imaging—has transformed our understanding of how young children, and indeed all people, learn. These tools enable researchers to "see through" the skull and better understand how the development of neuronal networks becomes more complex and efficient the more they are used and, in turn, becomes the foundation of new neuronal networks. In addition, shared research databases in the fields of education and psychology have provided a new, more detailed record of children's vocabulary growth and problem-solving and intellectual abilities.
Children are capable of—and in fact need—critical thinking and intellectual rigor. As educators, we must be proactive about how we engage their developing minds.
We now know that young people's brains develop differently based on the opportunities they have to engage actively and safely with rich and meaningful learning environments, social relationships, and ideas (Immordino-Yang, Darling-Hammond, & Krone, 2018). In the early years, children begin to build a neuronal foundation for later critical and deep thinking and develop intellectual dispositions, habits of mind, and inquisitiveness. In other words, during the early years, children are capable of—and in fact need—critical thinking and intellectual rigor. As educators, we must be proactive about how we engage their developing minds.
Making Sense of Their World
Preschoolers and kindergarteners are capable of having their own ideas, and that capability starts very early. Susan Engel (2021) has extensively studied the intellectual lives of children by listening to questions they ask, watching them solve problems in their play, and following their interests from early childhood into adulthood. Children are prolific questioners and are capable of thinking about a topic deeply over a sustained period of time. By the age of two, they have a knowledge base of things that they find interesting. By the middle of their third year, they can ask meaningful questions. By their fifth birthday, nearly a third of their questions are about why and how things happen (Engel, 2021). However, if their questioning is not taken seriously and they do not have support to find the answers to those questions, they tend to stop asking them. Yet these are the same children who will be expected to complete intellectually demanding tasks, such as designing their own science investigations, once they reach middle school.
We have known for some time that children who hear more words develop stronger vocabularies and do better in school, but we also now know that the content of that talk is important. When adults talk with a child about the child's ideas and include explanations, that young learner does better academically over time (Rowe, Leech, & Cabrera, 2017). Unfortunately, in some schools, the early years' curriculum focuses nearly exclusively on practicing literacy and numeracy skills and learning to follow directions. Topics of study (or units) often comprise a theme a week with prescribed outcomes that provide little time for children to build enough foundational knowledge to develop their own meaningful questions, much less to learn how to find and evaluate answers.
Immordino-Yang, Darling-Hammond, & Krone (2018) are just some of the researchers and educators increasingly calling for more integrative approaches to learning. They write:
Investigations that allow [students] to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills, to debate ideas and reflect on what they are learning, to attempt ambitious projects that interest them, and to receive feedback they can act on to improve their work.
Younger children also benefit from experiences like these, and having that training will prepare them for the critical thinking they'll need in later years.
Here are some strategies Ms. Wilson used to encourage and build her young students' investigative skills.
Taking a Project Approach
One way to bring intellectual thinking opportunities to very young children is to engage them in self-guided investigations using the Project Approach, which is part of the family of work that includes project-based learning, problem-based learning, and inquiry learning.
Ms. Wilson had previously worked with coauthor Judy Helm in implementing the Project Approach (Helm, Katz, & Wilson, 2023) in toddler through 2nd grade classrooms. In the Project Approach, the direction of the project is determined by children's interests. During the three phases of the Project Approach, teachers guide students in a long-term investigation of a topic, including learning vocabulary and processes related to that topic, and integrate a wide array of curriculum areas. The class investigation Ms. Wilson developed based on her conversation with students about local wildlife, What's in Our Woods?, was aligned directly to this approach.
When developing these kinds of projects, educators must remember that emotional involvement and engagement are keys to deep thinking. When students are interested and care about a topic, neurotransmitters activated in the brain increase their ability to pay attention and to focus, which in turn strengthens neuronal networks. Teachers should note what children say and the questions they ask, so they can be revisited. They should also observe children's free play. Three- and four-year-old children reveal their interests through play, especially if there are toys and materials to act out scenarios.
Credit: PHOTO BY REBECCA WILSON
As part of an investigative project, students in Rebecca Wilson's class identify deer tracks and discover a trail made by the deer. The project was designed to help students explore their own questions and gain critical thinking skills.
Following Through on Questions
Children need to be in environments that are open to their ideas. They need to feel safe to share divergent thoughts and not just come up with answers to a teacher's questions. Ms. Wilson was carefully observing children's interest when one child's question became the focus of the class. The investigation at the heart of the What's in Our Woods? project began with that question.
The children in the project generated a list of animals that they thought could be in their woods, including polar bears and horses. At this point, a teacher might be inclined to go through this list and steer children to the correct answers by saying, for example, "Polar bears live where there is ice and snow all year. Is there ice and snow here all year?" There is also a tendency to let Google answer the children's questions. This changes the intellectual task for the child back into repetition of the correct answer and does not help them develop higher-level thinking abilities. In this project, the teacher chose to validate children's suggestions and let them conduct their own research by responding to, say, the idea that polar bears live in the woods with: "I can see you are really thinking hard. I'll write your idea here and we can try to find out more."
There are many ways that 4-year-olds can test their own ideas and evaluate them; however, they benefit from a teacher who can provide them with experiences that answer their questions. Ms. Wilson did exactly that and led her students on a walk through the woods on the school property. This 40-minute walk was to be the first of many walks the children would take during this project. Unsurprisingly, this did not result in spotting any animals; if any were around, they were scared away by the boisterous group of 4-year-olds.
The walk did, however, provide new and critical evidence. The children were thrilled to find animal tracks in the snow, for example. They followed the tracks and imagined what animal might have left them. The teacher provided a paper "tracker tool" with drawings of animals and their tracks, to help students confirm some of their guesses. One set of tracks was harder for them to identify than others, so the teacher helped the children email photos from their walk to a county naturalist who had previously visited their classroom. The students learned that the tracks might belong to a squirrel. The naturalist also sent them nuts and pinecones that a real squirrel had chewed so they could learn to identify more evidence. Throughout the exchange, their questions grew.
Credit: PHOTO BY REBECCA WILSON
At the science center, one student conducts research on how different animals make different tracks.
Using Technology to Gather Evidence
The children now had proof there were animals in the woods, and they had a good idea of what kind of animals they might be. New questions revealed that they were thinking deeper thoughts about those animals. They began to wonder about the animals' lives—where they slept, what they ate, and what they did at night.
The children had identified deer tracks on the initial walk and now had many questions about the deer. On Ms. Wilson's invitation, one student's father visited the class and shared photos from trail cameras, explaining how these devices work. He then set up two trail cameras in the woods behind the school and left them up for a week to enable children to investigate firsthand who was in "their" woods, an empowering experience for students.
The teacher and children were also able to check on the cameras in person and were thrilled to see further evidence of deer when they found deer scat. Children watched the deer on the video and noticed how its white tail was visible on the trail camera photo as the deer ran away, something they had learned from the naturalist during an earlier classroom presentation.
Providing Access to Experts
The students were also deeply interested in the discovery that there are adults who have a great deal of knowledge about topics of interest to them. They learned that experts could provide resources and information that they wanted to know.
The county naturalist was already considered an important source of knowledge by the children, as she has a wealth of knowledge about their interests. The teacher also brought students into contact with other "experts," such as parents or family members of students, school staff, or adults in the community, who could answer other questions.
The children learned that many people had information that they could access by asking questions and listening to their answers.
As children shared their knowledge about this topic at home, families brought in antlers and an additional trail camera. The children learned that many people had information that they could access by asking questions and listening to their answers.
Representing Learning
An important part of the Project Approach for young children is sharing what they have learned in some way. This usually requires writing, teamwork, using topic-specific vocabulary repeatedly, and forming accurate statements about concepts. These representations are often shared in a culminating event.
The What's in Our Woods? project culminated when the children created an animal museum. They displayed photos, drawings, sculptures, and play environments they had created. Ms. Wilson made a slideshow of photos and Iowa Early Learning Standards covered in the project, which she shared with families.
The complexity of students' thinking was evidenced when they spontaneously developed a puppet play called, "Predators and Prey." Many children wanted to include mice that were watching out for foxes, and accurately incorporated the newly acquired vocabulary words predator and prey into the performance. As part of the animal museum, students also used other vocabulary words such as habitat and differentiated meat eaters from plant eaters by looking at jaw bones. As their display grew, the children demonstrated pride in their accomplishment. They had answered their own questions and learned a lot more.
Critical Thinking in Prekindergarten?
Over the course of this project, these students accomplished many prekindergarten goals in language, literacy, numeracy, science, and social skills. They laid a foundation for STEM and critical thinking while developing their intellectual dispositions—and they found it exciting and engaging. The students experienced the thrill of pursuing an intellectual idea and the satisfaction of learning something that they truly cared about. By investigating the answers to their own questions, these young learners were building a neurocognitive foundation, not just for deep thinking in a year or two, but for intellectual exploration for the rest of their lives.
