Education Commons^™

Encouraging Little People’S Big Questions: An Elementary School Teacher’S Guide To Encouraging Philosophical Inquiry In Decision Making, Morgan Flanagan

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Children serve as natural philosophers. Their innate sense of questioning, in a classroom setting, with the right instruction, can be beneficial to understanding many abstract concepts. This project is a user-friendly elementary school teachers’ guide to encouraging philosophical questions and thoughts in young students. Teachers should be able to utilize the guide as a skeleton in forming their own lesson plans. The guide is not a completed lesson plan, rather an array of activities and literature that can be incorporated into pre-existing units or be used as a tool in creating new ones. Outlines include literature synopsis, overall philosophical themes, …