Reflection has always been part of my practice. Reflecting on how children respond to lessons, activities, and projects, especially after introducing a new concept, helps educators adapt and improve future instruction. It’ s key to educator agency and professional judgment( NAEYC 2020; Aryal 2024).
My teaching approach often began by asking children three simple but powerful questions:
“ What do you know about ________?”“ What do you wonder about __________?”“ Why?”
At the time of my squirrel encounter, I was teaching in a suburban, Title I school in the Midwest. The kindergartners in my classroom formed a rich learning community, one I often described as a“ world within four walls,” where we embraced our linguistic and cultural diversity to work and learn together. The instruction planned for this day followed our consistent routine: 90 minutes of literacy instruction, embedded with movement, play, and station-based learning; 60 minutes of math; and an afternoon block that included 45 minutes of social studies, a studio class, and child-directed play.
On this day, I had planned to review our weekly sight words and to guide children as they used texts to make predictions, retold stories via a storyboard, and participated in planned writing experiences. Outside of our literacy block, I had planned for the children to build visual representations of addition models to 10 and to talk about needs and wants as part of our quarterly social studies unit. However, witnessing the children’ s avalanche of interest in squirrels, I adjusted our learning goals to build upon their engagement.
These questions typically followed an in-class demonstration, observation, or exploration through literature or classroom discovery stations. At the beginning of the year, children would engage in a think-draw-pair-share activity to draw and share their wonderings. As the year progressed, children began to write down their ideas, using the sentence stem“ I wonder ______” and labeling their drawings with key details and vocabulary. Encouraging children to reflect in these ways is also part of intentional teaching( Masterson & Mazzocco 2025).
After sharing during morning meeting about my squirrel encounter, I asked these three questions and provided students with blank paper, a lap board, and crayons to create their wonderings for discussion. As they actively questioned and shared with one another, I observed, listened, and began developing a teaching plan that included literacy and STEM while also building on their excitement about the squirrel.
Guiding Children’ s Explorations
To begin our exploration of squirrels, I hung the children’ s illustrations on the clothesline in our classroom where we always placed our wonderings. I then engaged them in a variety of squirrel-focused literacy and science activities.
40 Young Children
Summer 2026