Connected Learning

Connected Learning occurs at the intersection of student interests, relationships, and opportunities to participate in meaningful ways. (Connected Learning Alliance, 2018) ,  

Learning experiences that are contextualized this way can  improve student engagement and conceptual retention (Furco, 2010), while creating meaningful relationships beyond the classroom (Taylor et al., 2015).

Throughout this inquiry sequence, students connect their experiences of place with family, community, and digital audiences through documentation, reflection, and celebration of learning.

Experiential Learning

Experiential learning centers direct participation, exploration, and embodied experience (Schwartz, 2015). Experiential pedagogy can expand what participation, understanding, and competency look like by encouraging the externalization of thinking and normalizing multimodal demonstrations of proficiency.

Rather than receiving information passively, student experiences are grounded in:

• purposeful engagement, 

• emotional investment, 

• relationships, 

• reflection, and 

• risk-taking.

In this inquiry sequence, repeated visits to local places provide shared experiences that become the foundation for inquiry, reflection, and language development.

Interdisciplinary Learning

Interdisciplinary learning values multiple forms of knowledge equally and encourages the connecting of ideas across contexts and modalities (Wang & Sang, 2024; Parsons & Beauchamp, 2012). The learning is integrated because the experience itself is integrated. 

Throughout this inquiry sequence, students engage simultaneously with French Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, and ADST outcomes as they investigate meaningful questions about place, belonging, and responsibility. 

Place-Based Learning

Place-based learning situates inquiry within the local environments and communities that shape students' lives. Rather than learning about place; students are learning in, of, from, and for place (Yemini, 2025). Students to co-construct their learning by grounding their curiosities in our local context, while the teacher connects them to curricular outcomes (Furco, 2010; Taylor et al., 2015). 

Throughout this sequence, local places become both the context and the catalyst for learning.

Indigenous Ways of Learning, Knowing, and Being

Across the literature, relationships—to land, community, knowledge, and responsibility—are positioned as central to learning rather than peripheral contexts for it. Kress and Horn-Miller (2023) describe land as more than a setting for learning, but as an active relation through which knowledge, and identity are developed. 

Johnston (2019) and MacEachren (2018) identify significant overlap between place-based learning and Indigenous educational perspectives, particularly in their emphasis on intergenerational learning, experiential engagement, and interaction with the natural world. 

Together, these perspectives reinforce the importance of designing learning experiences that move beyond learning about place toward learning with and through place, while fostering relationships, reciprocity, and respect for diverse ways of knowing.

French Immersion Context

French Immersion learning contexts are highly linguistically mediated; language proficiency and conceptual understanding do not develop simultaneously (Cummins, 2007; Mady & Mason, 2018; Roy, 2020; Swain & Lapkin, 2005).  

It can be challenging for emergent multilingual learners to demonstrate understanding through language alone. Experiential, interdisciplinary, and multimodal learning opportunities can provide multiple entry points into the curriculum by allowing students to make their thinking visible through observation, creation, movement, and participation.