The purpose of this article is to revisit and offer a suggestion to extend the K-W-L instructional activity (What I Know, What I Want to Learn, What I Learned) (Ogle, 1986). Since its earliest formal recognition, K-W-L has helped young learners develop appropriate questions for research and organize what they know. In recent years, K-W-L has been revised to address emerging educational needs. For example, in K-W-L Plus (Carr & Ogle, 1987), learners develop their own questions for study.
I have extended K-W-L in two ways. First, I scaffold for young learners so that they can generate questions from their knowledge. This encourages lifelong learning and guides students to continually refine what they know. Second, I extendK-W-L with the inclusion of a fourth column: the where column. I have found that young learners often generate wonderful questions but are then discouraged because they lack the resources to find their answers. When teachers include brainstorming sessions that focus on where specific information can be located, they facilitate young learners' research.
The following example is drawn from several planning sessions conducted with 9-year-olds in a rural school district in the midwestern U.S. I worked with this particular class as we planned a unit together to study connections between the midwest and the oceans. We began with a simple brainstorming session. I told the class that I was interested in learning about the oceans because I had heard that the quality of our lives is directly related to the quality of the oceans. I asked the children what they already knew about oceans. Because these are children from the midwest, I was not surprised to