year noticed lots of snow” and“ We counted four robins this day last year.” The teachers’ aim is to visually create informative materials where children can discern patterns over time.
In this vignette, Sheila and her colleagues guided an E-STEM lesson on weather and related patterns that evoked children’ s wonder, observations, and reflections. Neutral, validating comments, such as“ I see you are noticing,” inspired further exploration and inquiry, allowing children to begin to identify patterns and relationships, make predictions, and formulate and share ideas( Chalufour & Worth 2003).
Other dialogic teaching strategies Sheila used on this occasion included
› Providing opportunities for children to voice their points of view:“ I wonder why there was snow last year, but it is so warm this year.”
› Asking open-ended questions related to what children observed:“ What do you think is making our weather so warm today?”
› Creating weather artifacts for reflection. The charts and photos not only allowed one class to reflect on what they observed one winter, they helped inform similar discussions among classes in subsequent years:“ Let’ s take this picture outside and see if we can find this bush. I wonder if it will look the same or different than last year.”
› Guiding experiences that support inquiry:“ How long do you think the tiny plants by the puddle will keep growing?” This type of inquiry led to estimation, graphing, and learning about what plants need to survive.
All these strategies can spur curiosity, mediate learning, and support vocabulary development( van der Veen et al. 2017). The objective for using dialogic talk in E-STEM is to explicitly invite children to explore natural phenomena in ways that deepen thinking and dispel misconceptions. This can prompt long-term E-STEM investigations and learning that foreground children’ s agency and each child’ s contributions to the study of real-life issues.
Another opportunity for exploration and dialogue about a real-life issue occurred on a neighborhood walk taken by Sheila and the children.
As they walk, Sheila and the children notice butterflies excitedly fluttering in a lilac bush, an unusual occurrence for the last week of September in Minnesota. This unusually warm fall stretches well into December, leading to one of the warmest years on record( Minnesota Department of Natural Resources 2024). This is only one of the observations children note. While the lilac bush’ s second and late blooming is likely due to stressful weather conditions, it gives children an opportunity to observe impacts on butterflies and the availability of their food source. Sheila also knows that lilacs are indicators of climate change because they bloom due to temperature, not light, impacting plant flowering and insect flight( Li et al. 2025).
Employing dialogic teaching, Sheila invites children to share observations, hypotheses, and wonderment about these phenomena.
When Sofia comments“ I see a butterfly,” three other children crowd around where she stands near the lilac bush. Sheila waits a few seconds, then asks,“ What do you notice about the butterfly in this lilac bush?”
“ It’ s yellow. I think it is the one we saw last year,” replies Josaih.
“ But they flew away,” Sofia responds.
Sheila asks,“ Hmm, why do you think it came back?”
Josaih says,“ It likes the flower.”
Recalling a previous classroom study of monarch butterflies, Sofia asks,“ Will the butterfly be a chrysalis in the bush?”
Sheila, who notices the observed butterfly is an eastern tiger swallowtail, one that might lay eggs in a lilac bush, prompts Sofia and the others to consider the monarch’ s metamorphosis they observed in class:“ Do you remember what this butterfly might be before a chrysalis is formed?”
“ A caterpillar,” recalls Josaih. He and Sofia begin to look through the leaves for caterpillars. Sheila watches as they turn over leaves that are beginning to curl from stress.
24 Young Children
Winter 2025