SoWashCo Young Scholars
Nurturing Potential, Sustaining Support
Welcome Back!
It is wonderful to welcome everyone back for another exciting year with SoWashCo Young Scholars. This year is sure to bring your student new adventures in thinking, discovering and understanding the world around them.
Throughout the year, Young Scholars will continue to build the core skills of divergent, convergent, visual and evaluative thinking all while working to increase access, affirmation, and advocates for your Young Scholar.
Please feel free to reach out any time with questions, concerns, thoughts, or ideas. SoWashCo Young Scholars is here for both students and families, so let me know how I can best support you and your Young Scholar!
This Month in Young Scholars
- Discover a fun and easy tool for building your child's inquiry skills
- Learn more about a free upcoming parent education opportunity
Building Inquiry Skills
Children are experts at inquiry from the moment they are born. They naturally question and explore the world around them.
Even though children don't need to be taught how to be curious, they do need guidance to grow and expand the tools of inquiry in order to ask deeper questions and explore in more complex ways.
This month, we are going to take a look at a tool called Notice and Wonder that can be used in many different ways to build your Young Scholar's inquiry skills and ignite their talent for discovery.
Notice and Wonder Inquiry Tool
The next time your Young Scholar is curious about something, try asking them these 3 questions:
- What do you notice?
- What do you wonder?
- What do you think about that?
These types of notice and wonder questions work great with almost any topic to build and deepen your Young Scholar's inquiry skills because they ask your child to think about their thinking, allowing them to dig deeper into a topic than they might normally do.
By paying attention to what they notice and wonder, your Young Scholar naturally starts to look at things in new and more complex ways. This can lead to exciting discoveries and a new understanding of the world around them.
Here are a few ideas for getting started using Notice and Wonder:
- Click on the image or pdf link of the Notice & Wonder organizer below to see a larger version or save a copy to your computer. Feel free to use electronically, or print it out if that works best for you.
- Show your Young Scholar how it's done by modeling your own thinking about a topic using the notice and wonder questions.
- Instead of asking, "How was your day?", try asking, "What is one thing you noticed today?" What is one thing you wondered?"
- Take a look through the resources shown below the chart for a few ideas to spark your Young Scholar's curiosity. These, of course, are only suggestions. The world is an amazing place. There's a lot to choose from in our everyday lives to notice and wonder, too!
Resources for Getting Started with Notice and Wonder
Curiosities & Puzzle- ments
Wondering what Puzzlements is like? Check out this link for some samples:
Google Earth
The Kids Should See This
YOUNG SCHOLARS WORKS WITH STUDENTS, FAMILIES AND SCHOOLS TO INCREASE...
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About Me
Hello!
My name is Colleen Redmond, and I am honored to work as Coordinator for SoWashCo Young Scholars.
I'm a mom, a wife, small business owner, avid biker (the pedal kind), book enthusiast, and beekeeper.
I've been lucky enough to teach in South Washington County Schools for over twenty-five years and have had the incredible opportunity to be a part of the lives of so many students and families over the years.
Now, as part of Young Scholars, I have the honor of working with the amazing staff, students, and families throughout SoWashCo to implement and grow the Young Scholars program.
I am so very excited to work with and support you and your Young Scholar. I can't wait to see where the journey takes us!
Contact Information
Please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions, thoughts, or needs!
Colleen Redmond
651-425-6212