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Discovery of the World

Discovery of the World (DOW)

As an early childhood educator, you can encourage children to explore all aspects of their environment, including their home, school, various neighbourhoods, cultures and events, technology and the natural world.  You play an important role in creating and facilitating learning experiences that:

Develop Children’s Sense of Wonder and Curiosity

You can stimulate and sustain children’s sense of wonder and curiosity through:
  • Personal experiences: Personal experiences provide meaningful contexts for children to discover the world. Helping children make connections between their home and preschool experiences increases their engagement.
  • Sensory experiences: When children engage with the world through their senses, it ignites their curiosity and uncovers further questions for exploration.
  • Intentionally planned experiences: These encourage children to explore, ask questions, make new discoveries and develop new excitement for learning.

Develop Children’s Process Skills

As children observe, ask questions, experiment and investigate, they develop important process skills. 
  • Observing: This is the process of using the five senses to look closely and notice things. 
  • Comparing and classifying: This involves identifying similarities and differences and informs the sorting and organising of things into groups.
  • Sequencing: This involves recognising the order of events/things and patterns of change in people, objects and the environment over time.  
  • Questioning: This involves formulating questions to find out and learn about how things work and why things happen. 
  • Investigating: The process of investigation could involve asking questions, making predictions, testing out ideas, and finding answers in a variety of ways.
  • Inferring: When making inferences, children draw conclusions or explain a phenomenon based on what is observed or the information presented to them, and their prior knowledge.
  • Predicting: When making predictions, children make informed guesses about what would happen by recalling their prior knowledge or experiences.
  • Recording, Drawing Conclusions and Communicating: Recording of observations and information gathered can be in the form of drawing, writing, mark making, taking photographs, videos, or audio clips. This helps children to be process the information to form opinions and conclusions. They can share about and show their discoveries either verbally or visually in drawings, simple writing, artworks or dramatisation. 


Develop Children’s Positive Attitudes towards the Environment

It is important to cultivate in children positive attitudes of responsibility, care and respect towards the world around them. 


What are the benefits?

Discovery of the World nurtures children’s natural curiosity for their surroundings, community and the world. It has many benefits including:
  • Ignites Curiosity and the Joy of Discovery: By encouraging exploration of their environment, children learn about the world they live in. This fosters a sense of wonder and joy in learning, encourages them to explore, make new discoveries and become confident and self-motivated learners. 
  • Develops Essential Process Skills: Process skills are crucial to foster children’s critical and analytical thinking, reasoning and problem-solving abilities. This lays the foundation for future learning and knowledge building in areas such as science, geography, and history. 
  • Promotes Responsibility and Respect: Children develop a sense of responsibility and respect for the environment, people from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and settings. They learn to care for themselves, others and the environment, which lays the foundation for teaching them about sustainability. 

Learning Goals and Knowledge, Skills and Dispositions (KSDs) in DOW

Refer to the Educators’ Guide for Discovery of the World for more information.

Discovery of the World

Learning Goal 1: Show curiosity and interest in the world they live in

Knowledge, Skills and Dispositions (KSD):
Provide opportunities for children to…
1.1 Develop an awareness of their immediate environment (e.g., people, animals, plants, places, events)
1.2 Ask questions about their immediate environment, why things happen and how things work

Learning Goal 2: Use essential process skills to make sense of the world around them

Knowledge, Skills and Dispositions (KSD):
Provide opportunities for children to…
2.1 Develop skills to gather information about the world around them
2.2 Develop skills to organise information gathered
2.3 Develop skills to interpret information gathered
2.4 Develop skills to communicate information gathered

Learning Goal 3: Develop a sense of responsibility, care and respect for the world around them

Knowledge, Skills and Dispositions (KSD):
Provide opportunities for children to…
3.1 Develop an awareness of the importance of showing care and respect for people from different backgrounds, cultures and settings
3.2 Develop an awareness of the need to show responsibility, care and respect for plants, animals and things in the environment
3.3 Develop an awareness of how human behaviours and their actions might affect their immediate environment and the world they live in
3.4 Show responsibility, care and respect for living and non-living things

How can you do it?

Developing children’s sense of wonder and curiosity and encouraging exploration and discovery

Modelling a Sense of Wonder and Curiosity

You can model by demonstrating interest, curiosity, and respect for your surroundings. Here are some tips to do so:
  • Be present and engaged
  • Verbalise your wonderment and share your discoveries
  • Value children’s questions and show interest to find the answers together with them

Using Prompts and Effective Questioning

You can use prompts and questioning intentionally to:
  • Invite children’s interest and motivate their further exploration
  • Help children draw meaningful connections between their prior knowledge and new learning
  • Encourage children to reflect on their learning experiences and apply or communicate what they have discovered.

Here are some tips for effective prompting and questioning:
  • Plan Ahead: Before the start of an activity, plan a series of intentional questions that encourage curiosity, reflection and communication. You can do so by anticipating children’s responses and actions.
  • Provide Wait Time: Allow sufficient time for children to think before responding. Avoid appearing impatient or undermining their thinking by providing the answers too soon. 
  • Build on Responses: Make use of or build on the children’s responses to ask questions or prompts. This encourages them to elaborate on their thinking and extend their ideas. 
  • Use Different Question Types Appropriately: You can use close-ended questions to help children recall information and focus their attention. Open-ended questions encourage a variety of responses, challenge children's thinking, and promote creativity and critical thinking. 

Providing opportunities for children to gather information

Introducing Simple Experiments

You can use experiments for children to discover and find out the answers to their questions. 

Here are some guidelines when planning for simple experiments:
  • Before the experiment: Get children excited about the topic of interest. Encourage them to make informed predictions by drawing links with their prior experiences or knowledge. Record their predictions for future reference.
  • During the experiment: Provide opportunities for children to develop process skills through careful observations, making comparisons, testing ideas, collecting information and drawing conclusions. Provide materials such as writing tools or a camera to record their findings.
  • After the experiment: Guide children to compare their findings with their earlier predictions. Encourage them to use their own way of explaining and sharing their discoveries. 

Inviting Resource Persons

You can invite individuals including professionals, family members, or people from the community to share first-hand accounts with the children. They can talk about their jobs, roles, responsibilities, tools they use, or hobbies to help children better relate to different occupations and interest areas. Prior to the sharing, you can guide the children in brainstorming questions for the resource person and to remind them to be respectful when interacting with the resource person, including taking turns to listen and speak and using the right volume and tone.

Conducting Field Trips

You can provide children with valuable learning experiences that extend beyond the classroom by planning purposeful and engaging field trips that help them understand their immediate environment and the world around them. 

When conducting field trips, it is crucial to consider that field trips are different from excursions, which are usually planned as a recreational activity. Hence, in the planning of field trips it is important to:
  • Identify clear learning objectives
  • Consider destinations that foster sensory experiences and authentic learning opportunities
  • Plan engaging activities for active participation

Here are the key processes involved in conducting field trips:
  • Prior to the field trip: conduct pre-trip recce, make pre-trip arrangements, conduct pre-trip activities
  • During the field trip: conduct on-site activities, carry out all safety measures
  • After the field trip: conduct post-trip activities, reflect on learning, evaluate field trip

Using Picture Books and Print Media

You can use picture books and print media such as newspapers, magazines, brochures and information books at various stages of an activity or project to:
  • Stimulate wonder and inspire further investigation
  • Help children search for information, debunk misconceptions, and gain insights about people, communities and the environment
  • Develop children’s awareness and appreciation of diversity

Here are some ways you can make these resources accessible:
  • Display picture books and print materials at Reading or Discovery Centres
  • Organise the materials by theme for children to easily find relevant information and connect it to their current learning experiences.

Using Technology and Interactive Media

While technology offers online learning opportunities, it should be used in moderation and should not replace physical teaching and learning experiences. 

Here are some key considerations when using technology and interactive media in the classroom:

Examples of technology and interactive media are:
  • Video clips
  • Movies
  • E-books
  • Applications

Helping children organise, consolidate and communicate their learning

Using Diagrams and Graphic Organisers

Examples of diagrams and graphic organisers are:
  • K-W-L chart
  • Cycle diagram
  • Flow chart
  • Concept map
  • Venn diagram

You can use diagrams and graphic organisers to make children’s learning visible.

Use-of-Graphic-Organisers.png
Uses of Graphic Organisers
MOE (2023). Nurturing Early Learners Educators’ Guide for Discovery of the World, Using Diagrams and Graphic Organisers (pp. 61). Singapore.

Developing children’s positive attitudes towards the environment

Developing Care and Respect for People in the Community

You can carefully design learning experiences that provide opportunities for children to interact and learn about different people, cultures, and perspectives. It is also important for teachers to model positive attitudes. This helps children to foster community awareness, appreciation for diversity, and practice respectful behaviours.

Some experiences include:
  • Neighbourhood walks and visits to community spaces such as markets, and places of worship
  • Participation in community events, festivals and cultural celebrations
  • Use stories, role-play, art and music to teach children about different cultures and people

Developing Care and Respect for Nature

You can nurture children’s appreciation, care and respect for the natural world by engaging in outdoor explorations and activities. Nature walks, sensory experiences and learning journeys are opportunities to connect children with nature. 

Developing a Sense of Social Responsibility

You can provide children with opportunities to discuss environmental and real-world issues in a child-friendly manner and to practise what they have learnt consistently in the preschool so that they can develop good everyday habits to contribute to sustainable living. This also encourages them to think critically, explore different perspectives and learn about how they could positively impact the environment and society. 

Organising the Learning Environment

The learning environment can be intentionally created to promote inquiry and discovery. You should consider the physical, interactional and temporal aspects of the environment.

Indoor Spaces

You can integrate the knowledge, skills and dispositions in Discovery of the World into learning centres such as the Discovery Centre, Construction or Block Play Centre, Art and Craft Centre. These spaces help children to:
  • Learn and explore topics of interests
  • Develop and use process skills
  • Engage in meaningful and hands-on experiences
  • Work, play and interact respectfully and cooperatively with their peers and teachers

You should carefully choose resources that would arouse children’s curiosity, promote inquiry and provide opportunities for them to develop and practise their process skills. This could include resources such as:
  • Natural materials
  • Live specimens
  • Tools and equipment
  • Recycled materials and loose parts
  • A variety of open-ended materials 
  • Video, audio and picture resources
  • Resources for recording purposes 

A small but intentional selection of resources/materials encourage children to be more focused and actively engaged to explore and construct knowledge. 

Outdoor spaces

Outdoor spaces beyond the classroom offers a rich base of sensorial experiences to promote exploration, quality interactions and purposeful play. Some examples include:
  • Shadow play
  • Sand and water play
  • Gardening
  • Open-ended play

Monitoring and assessing children's learning and development

You can gain valuable insights about how children are learning and making sense of the world around them through their everyday experiences. You can do so by:
  • Staying near to and observing the children during their exploration and investigation, including what they are looking at, talking about and choosing to do
  • Making records and documentations of children’s conversations/actions using anecdotal notes, photographs and videos 
  • Collecting and analysing samples of their drawings and constructions

This allows you to monitor and assess children’s progress and make informed revisions to subsequent learning experiences. Here are some questions to consider when observing the children with respect to the three learning goals for Discovery of the World.

Resources


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