Nurturing Young Advocates: How KG1 Students Champion Living Things
Working with the KG1 team at ACS-Abu Dhabi and touring their beautiful and innovative classroom space.
An inspiring look inside the American Community School (ACS) of Abu Dhabi's KG1 program, where the youngest learners are developing empathy, knowledge, and advocacy skills through deep exploration of the natural world.
Reimagining Early Learning Spaces
Walk into the KG1 learning spaces at the American Community School of Abu Dhabi, and you'll immediately notice these aren’t like traditional classrooms. These are open-concept centres where 50 young learners are guided by four teachers and two instructional assistants in a thoughtfully designed space that is divided into various learning zones—from climbing walls and science areas to art stations and reading nooks.
While students begin and end their day in one of three home-base groups of 17-18 children, the majority of their learning happens as they freely explore the entire space, choosing activities that spark their curiosity and drive their learning forward.
It's within this flexible, student-centred environment that the recent "Living Things" unit blossomed this year, becoming a powerful example of how even our youngest learners can develop meaningful connections with the natural world and take authentic action to protect it.
Diving Into the Living World
The "Living Things" unit, running from January through March for approximately 10 weeks, represents the third major inquiry of the school year for 4- and 5-year old learners. What makes this iteration particularly noteworthy is the collaborative planning process that brought together the teaching team, curriculum coaches, and two consultants (me, and Aaron Moniz from Inspire Citizens) to reimagine how young children might engage with this topic.
Essential questions for this unit were:
The unit began with a two-week "tuning-in" period where teachers carefully set up provocations and invitations to pique student interest.
“These initial explorations revealed four main areas of fascination among the children: ocean life, plant life, land animals, and insects,” says KG1 teacher Sabine Luckhardt.
Rather than assigning groups arbitrarily, teachers honoured student agency by allowing children to select their first and second choice strands. This process resulted in four balanced inquiry groups of 12-13 students each, ensuring every child could pursue genuine interests while keeping groups manageable for in-depth learning.
Each day, students would gather with their inquiry group for a focused 10-15 minute discussion before branching out into open exploration time. This structure provided the perfect balance of guided inquiry and self-directed discovery.
From Understanding to Action
What truly distinguished this unit was how seamlessly children moved from learning about living things to advocating for them. As they deepened their understanding, students began to recognize the interconnectedness of living systems—how plants depend on insects, how ocean creatures are affected by human actions, and how their own choices impact the natural world.
This awareness catalyzed an organic progression toward advocacy:
The insect inquiry group created ChatterPix videos where they animated images of insects to explain their importance to the ecosystem. These compelling videos helped other students understand why even "scary" insects deserve protection.
Students in the ocean life group developed a dramatic play scenario where they rescued animals from plastic pollution. This imaginative play reinforced their understanding of human impact on marine environments while building empathy for affected creatures.
The plant group learned that paper comes from trees and experimented with recycling paper and initiating paper converstaion efforts in the classroom. To further share messages about the importance of conserving trees, students designed a tall tree with found wooden branches and used recycled for paper mache. They then used ChatterPix to take photos of their tree and give this tree a voice to share advocacy messages.
The land animals group explored habitats and the threats animals face, creating persuasive messages about why environments need protection. The group shared their messages through posters and videos, and by animating a habitat they created from recycled materials with the use of a stop motion app (letting the jungle animals they had studied roam around and share advocacy messages).
“What's remarkable is how these advocacy projects emerged authentically from the children's growing knowledge and concern, rather than being prescribed by adults,” reflects Sabine.
As well, technology tools like ChatterPix and digital storytelling strategies became powerful vehicles for students to amplify their voices and share their messages with a wider audience.
Lasting Impact Beyond the Unit
The effects of this learning experience didn't end when the unit concluded. Teachers report that students continue their advocacy work in various ways:
Signs to raise awareness about picking up and properly disposing garbage remain displayed around campus, with students checking on them regularly and explaining their purpose to others
Classroom paper waste has decreased significantly as students remind each other about conservation practices
Increased care and curiosity about small insects discovered on the playground
Increased confidence in speaking up about environmental concerns, showing that even at 4-5 years old, students recognize their potential to influence positive change
Below: a few student examples of Chatterpix digital stories created by students to advocate for insects on the playground and beyond.
The Power of Intentional Collaboration
A key factor in the unit's success was collaboration with me and Aaron while we were on-site at ACS in October and January; we were able to speak into the unit design process at two different times when the team met for planning sessions, and this partnership enhanced the unit's purposefulness and in impactful ways:
It connected storytelling to action, giving students authentic reasons to develop literacy and advocacy/active global and digital citizenship skills
It helped new teachers recognize the value and feasibility of an action-oriented approach with young learners
It created natural bridges between different curricular areas, from science and language to social-emotional learning
When a team has a chance to collaborate with a consultant, especially in alignment with specific goals (in this case, active global citizenship and advocacy), there’s an opportunity for fresh perspectives, new tools and strategies, and shifts in perspective that create ripple effects throughout the learning process.
Aaron Moniz, from Inspire Citizens, and I were recently on-site at ACS-Abu Dhabi. Collaborating with each other and the ACS team was a wonderful experience.
Looking Forward
Building on this success, the KG1 teaching team plans to continue embedding service action and storytelling approaches in future units.
“In our upcoming ‘Expressing Ourselves’ unit, we will explore how the storytelling techniques that proved so powerful in the ‘Living Things’ unit might be applied to new contexts,” says Sabine.
As this new unit launches, some KG1 teachers will also attend a Reggio Emilia experience to gather fresh inspiration for their child-centered approach; there is excitement and anticipation of the impact of this professional learning experience on the design of the final unit of the year.
Reflection
This Living Things unit demonstrates that when we create the right conditions—honoring student choice, providing time for deep exploration, and valuing capacity for meaningful action— our youngest learners can develop as thoughtful advocates for nature.
The journey from curiosity to knowledge to advocacy unfolded naturally because teachers recognized that when young children learn about something - in this case, the natural world and living things - they care deeply about it and want to make things better. By supporting rather than directing this process, educators at ACS Abu Dhabi helped their students discover their own power to create positive change.
This blog post is based on an interview with Sabine, KG1 teacher at American Community School of Abu Dhabi, discussing their innovative approach to early childhood education through the Living Things unit.
Check out my interview with Sabine below, along with a video that the KG1 teachers made to capture learning and action from the “Living Things” unit.
