Supporting Play and Inquiry with Barry Kluger-Bell

Guest Post by Laura Friedman of Creativity in Learning, Lucinda Burk of Buckingham, Browne & Nichols and Yvonne Liu-Constant of Lesley University

This past weekend we had a wonderful workshop in Maine titled Supporting Play and Inquiry with Barry Kluger-Bell at our host site, Fiddlehead School of Arts & Sciences.  We are grateful to have connected with Barry almost a decade ago through our ongoing connections with Hawkins Centers of Learning.

Saturday began with the exploration of foam using three different frameworks:

• open exploration of materials

• an open challenge without specific instructions to create a tower with the foam

• using explicit instructions from a worksheet guide.
  

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We continued Saturday afternoon with a look at light and shadow.  This two-day investigation gave each of us an opportunity to delve into our understanding of the topic, and then to build on that awareness to create new understanding.  For some, the process from start to finish brought significant change in our thinking about how shadows are created.

During both of these inquiries, we had opportunities to consider our experiences and relate these to our work in the classroom.  Many of us will return to our classes with a new perception of the intersections in the learning continuum between and among unguided experience with materials and experiences that are supported by another who holds deeper understanding of a topic.