Sunday, May 15, 2011
Celebration!
Last Saturday, I finally graduated with my Master of Arts in Teaching degree with a focus in Early Childhood Education. Over the last two years I had the great opportunity to study at a great institution under professors and professionals that really embrace my educational philosophy and are champions for young children everywhere. It's bittersweet because I've gained so much from constantly collaborating with professors and other teachers in my program of study but I have to admit I will enjoy the free time!
Sunday, April 10, 2011
The Power of a Snap Cube
A beautiful thing happened last week in my kindergarten class! During a round of afternoon centers, I noticed two little boys very carefully lining up snap cubes on either side of a table.
I asked them what they were doing, they replied, “We’re playing our new game.” I asked them to explain to me how to play their game. They told me the rules and told me they created it together. It’s a game they call Snap Cube War. They pick a color and line it up on either side of the table. They take turns placing their color cubes in the middle. The goal is to cross your opponent’s color line but you can only move when you “jump” over your opponent’s color cube.
After watching a round of Snap Cube War, I asked the boys some questions and listened to them negotiate rules to play the game. They boys decided they wanted to play this game again and again, and maybe some of their classmates would like to play it too, so they started writing a “How To” narrative together. Their first draft was quite impressive, we’re going to edit it together next week and put it in a format that other students can read and use.
Their game could have been inspired by another game they’ve played or observed, but their negotiations and rationalizations of rules and procedures were inspiring. I had to step back and remind myself, these little boys are 6 years old because their play was so advanced. They took something as ordinary as a snap cube, independently engaged in communication and creation to facilitate their own rich play experience. I hope this evidence encourages other teachers to let their children play, there are no limits to what their students can uncover and create.
I asked them what they were doing, they replied, “We’re playing our new game.” I asked them to explain to me how to play their game. They told me the rules and told me they created it together. It’s a game they call Snap Cube War. They pick a color and line it up on either side of the table. They take turns placing their color cubes in the middle. The goal is to cross your opponent’s color line but you can only move when you “jump” over your opponent’s color cube.
After watching a round of Snap Cube War, I asked the boys some questions and listened to them negotiate rules to play the game. They boys decided they wanted to play this game again and again, and maybe some of their classmates would like to play it too, so they started writing a “How To” narrative together. Their first draft was quite impressive, we’re going to edit it together next week and put it in a format that other students can read and use.
Their game could have been inspired by another game they’ve played or observed, but their negotiations and rationalizations of rules and procedures were inspiring. I had to step back and remind myself, these little boys are 6 years old because their play was so advanced. They took something as ordinary as a snap cube, independently engaged in communication and creation to facilitate their own rich play experience. I hope this evidence encourages other teachers to let their children play, there are no limits to what their students can uncover and create.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Mastery of a Tough Objective Through Play
Where I teach, it’s all about mastery! We have to show our students’ mastery through percentages, one-on-one assessments every quarter entered into beastly spreadsheets that average, compute, slice and spit out numbers to give an overall performance scores for teachers and students. And yes, this happens in kindergarten so the pressure starts early. Our prioritized, assessed learning goals are pre-determined by administrators and they sometimes seem very out of touch with what matters most to the growth of my kinders but at our school, that’s just how it is. There is so much emphasis placed on results and percentages, I try as hard as I can to observe and show mastery through creative ways that are fun and make sense to my students.
Last week, one of my pre-determined, prioritized learning goals seemed so difficult for me to teach much less assess. The objective was: students will be able to create and describe a visualization from text. For more seasoned kindergarten teachers, perhaps this doesn’t sound so challenging, but I had a very tough time figuring out just how I was going to teach and facilitate mastery of this objective. Visualization is important to comprehension, but it seems like such an intangible thing to teach, much less produce quantifiable evidence of progress or mastery.
I started with an amazing text, Voices in the Park by: Anthony Browne, about events in a park one afternoon told by four different characters. I thought if this whole attempt at teaching visualization flopped, at least my students would get exposure to quality literature. This book usually generates thoughtful conversation among children and makes students think about perspective. The different “voices” describing their individual encounters begs the question, how can two people see the exact same event in different ways? Additionally, this book has great visuals, all of the characters have human bodies but monkey or gorilla faces. There are random things in the background of the pages and every time we read the book, students point out new things I hadn’t noticed before. The author’s choice of visuals alone is a great conversation starter.
The first day we read and discussed the book. In the story, the older male character seems hopeless about finding a job, one of my students made the brilliant conclusion that he’d be depressed too, it’s probably extremely difficult to find a job when you’re a gorilla!
By the second day, most students were starting to put together the multiple perspective concept. My students became incredibly curious about uncovering explanations for why Charles’ mother was so grumpy, they just couldn’t figure out why if her son was sad because he was alone in the house and then met a funny little girl to play with, why wouldn’t the mom be happy for her son? Afterall, the little girl wasn’t a big, mean stranger! I’m getting off topic, this will have to be another discussion and post for another day!
By the end of the week and much discussion, the students wanted to dramatize the story. Students got to choose the characters they wanted to be and we went through the events that happened in the story. Even if a character wasn’t on the page or telling their version, the student playing that character was still doing something. For example, I showed students this page and asked them to dramatize it for me. The only characters seen on this page of the book are the mother and Charles.
You don’t see the other two characters, Smudge and her father, but the students that were playing those characters didn’t just sit down and wait for the parts of the book that their character was the active voice, they did what they thought those characters would be doing even if they couldn’t see be seen on the page and even added in their own dialogue. Smudge’s father is reading his newspaper, looking for a job and Smudge is off by herself playing happily, in this picture on top of a table which this student explained as hanging from invisible monkey bars. The dialogue the actors engaged in was completely genuine and not found anywhere in the text—the little boy playing the father would say things like “I wish more kids would come to this park, Smudge needs a playmate and I’m too old. I wish I could just find a circus to join!” and the little girl playing Smudge said, “Why isn’t there anyone to play with at this park! I don’t want to bother Daddy, he’s reading!”
My students were visualizing and not only describing those visualizations, they were acting them out, for everyone to see. They took an objective I was not confident I could effectively teach or assess and made it into something really awesome! Just another example of how important good literature and the opportunity to dramatize are in the kindergarten classroom. Students need that time to put themselves into the stories, manipulate what they see and hear to deepen their understanding of texts. They never cease to amaze me!
Last week, one of my pre-determined, prioritized learning goals seemed so difficult for me to teach much less assess. The objective was: students will be able to create and describe a visualization from text. For more seasoned kindergarten teachers, perhaps this doesn’t sound so challenging, but I had a very tough time figuring out just how I was going to teach and facilitate mastery of this objective. Visualization is important to comprehension, but it seems like such an intangible thing to teach, much less produce quantifiable evidence of progress or mastery.
I started with an amazing text, Voices in the Park by: Anthony Browne, about events in a park one afternoon told by four different characters. I thought if this whole attempt at teaching visualization flopped, at least my students would get exposure to quality literature. This book usually generates thoughtful conversation among children and makes students think about perspective. The different “voices” describing their individual encounters begs the question, how can two people see the exact same event in different ways? Additionally, this book has great visuals, all of the characters have human bodies but monkey or gorilla faces. There are random things in the background of the pages and every time we read the book, students point out new things I hadn’t noticed before. The author’s choice of visuals alone is a great conversation starter.
The first day we read and discussed the book. In the story, the older male character seems hopeless about finding a job, one of my students made the brilliant conclusion that he’d be depressed too, it’s probably extremely difficult to find a job when you’re a gorilla!
By the second day, most students were starting to put together the multiple perspective concept. My students became incredibly curious about uncovering explanations for why Charles’ mother was so grumpy, they just couldn’t figure out why if her son was sad because he was alone in the house and then met a funny little girl to play with, why wouldn’t the mom be happy for her son? Afterall, the little girl wasn’t a big, mean stranger! I’m getting off topic, this will have to be another discussion and post for another day!
By the end of the week and much discussion, the students wanted to dramatize the story. Students got to choose the characters they wanted to be and we went through the events that happened in the story. Even if a character wasn’t on the page or telling their version, the student playing that character was still doing something. For example, I showed students this page and asked them to dramatize it for me. The only characters seen on this page of the book are the mother and Charles.
You don’t see the other two characters, Smudge and her father, but the students that were playing those characters didn’t just sit down and wait for the parts of the book that their character was the active voice, they did what they thought those characters would be doing even if they couldn’t see be seen on the page and even added in their own dialogue. Smudge’s father is reading his newspaper, looking for a job and Smudge is off by herself playing happily, in this picture on top of a table which this student explained as hanging from invisible monkey bars. The dialogue the actors engaged in was completely genuine and not found anywhere in the text—the little boy playing the father would say things like “I wish more kids would come to this park, Smudge needs a playmate and I’m too old. I wish I could just find a circus to join!” and the little girl playing Smudge said, “Why isn’t there anyone to play with at this park! I don’t want to bother Daddy, he’s reading!”
My students were visualizing and not only describing those visualizations, they were acting them out, for everyone to see. They took an objective I was not confident I could effectively teach or assess and made it into something really awesome! Just another example of how important good literature and the opportunity to dramatize are in the kindergarten classroom. Students need that time to put themselves into the stories, manipulate what they see and hear to deepen their understanding of texts. They never cease to amaze me!
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Serious Builders
We LOVE to build and construct in our classroom! We have varieties of blocks, snap cubes and clay. Construction is one of the most popular play activities in our classroom. I took a few photos of what my kiddos built today and thought my little builders deserved to comment on their own work. I used a Voicethread to capture their explanations of their own creations! This is my first time using this new technology with my students, they loved it!
Saturday, March 19, 2011
A Visit from a Leprechaun
One of the things I love to do with my kids, more than anything, is engage in fantasy play! It lets me, even if I am pretending, believe in magical things like Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, princesses, super heroes and happy endings.
All week, we learned about St. Patrick’s Day—the history and different things people do around the world to celebrate. I love any and all Gail Gibbons’ books, so her book on St. Patrick’s Day seemed like an obvious choice for an introductory text.
My students are very inquisitive, so when we read the page about leprechauns in the Gibbons book, they were incredibly curious. Lots of questions—Where do leprechauns live? Are leprechauns nice or mean? What do they look like? Are all leprechauns boys? Can there be girl leprechauns? Why do leprechauns wear green?
Because of all of the questions, I thought we could explore leprechauns a little more. The next day we read The Leprechaun’s Gold by Pamela Duncan Edwards. It was a cute story that introduced the mischievous reputation of leprechaun’s but in the end the leprechauns turned out to be very helpful and sweet.
In the next few days, my students started using leprechauns as explanations for things that happened in our room or at their homes. One little boy said, “Ms. P, can you tie my shoes?” As I was tying them, he said, “You know how this happened, don’t you? I was concentrating really hard in writer’s workshop. I wasn’t paying attention and a leprechaun crawled under the table and untied my shoes!”
On St. Patrick’s Day, when the kiddos came back from lunch we found someone had trashed our classroom and our cookies with green frosting and sprinkles for our party were missing! We looked everywhere and the only clue we could find was a trail of green glitter leading to the window sill!
After we cleaned up the mess, it was time to go to centers. After a very fun play day, it was time for art class. After the students returned from art class, they found that the cookies we had for our party were back and there was a note on the board.
We enjoyed our cookies, put on a little magic dust for good luck and decided leprechauns weren’t so bad after all. They get a bad rap because they like to play jokes and tricks on people, but at the end of the day they’re sweet little guys. Some days in Kindergarten it’s fun to just be silly and believe in things that are magical without a logical explanation. I love seeing my students enamored at make-believe things without reason and listen to their own creative takes on things like lucky leprechaun dust or little green men. Days like these are what makes being a Kindergarten teacher so fun, I hope my students enjoyed it as much as I did.
All week, we learned about St. Patrick’s Day—the history and different things people do around the world to celebrate. I love any and all Gail Gibbons’ books, so her book on St. Patrick’s Day seemed like an obvious choice for an introductory text.
My students are very inquisitive, so when we read the page about leprechauns in the Gibbons book, they were incredibly curious. Lots of questions—Where do leprechauns live? Are leprechauns nice or mean? What do they look like? Are all leprechauns boys? Can there be girl leprechauns? Why do leprechauns wear green?
Because of all of the questions, I thought we could explore leprechauns a little more. The next day we read The Leprechaun’s Gold by Pamela Duncan Edwards. It was a cute story that introduced the mischievous reputation of leprechaun’s but in the end the leprechauns turned out to be very helpful and sweet.
In the next few days, my students started using leprechauns as explanations for things that happened in our room or at their homes. One little boy said, “Ms. P, can you tie my shoes?” As I was tying them, he said, “You know how this happened, don’t you? I was concentrating really hard in writer’s workshop. I wasn’t paying attention and a leprechaun crawled under the table and untied my shoes!”
On St. Patrick’s Day, when the kiddos came back from lunch we found someone had trashed our classroom and our cookies with green frosting and sprinkles for our party were missing! We looked everywhere and the only clue we could find was a trail of green glitter leading to the window sill!
After we cleaned up the mess, it was time to go to centers. After a very fun play day, it was time for art class. After the students returned from art class, they found that the cookies we had for our party were back and there was a note on the board.
We enjoyed our cookies, put on a little magic dust for good luck and decided leprechauns weren’t so bad after all. They get a bad rap because they like to play jokes and tricks on people, but at the end of the day they’re sweet little guys. Some days in Kindergarten it’s fun to just be silly and believe in things that are magical without a logical explanation. I love seeing my students enamored at make-believe things without reason and listen to their own creative takes on things like lucky leprechaun dust or little green men. Days like these are what makes being a Kindergarten teacher so fun, I hope my students enjoyed it as much as I did.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Play - Debrief - RePlay
I love the instructional method play-debrief-replay explained in the book Serious Players in the Primary Classroom. Selma Wasserman explains play-debrief-replay as "providing opportunities for creative, investigative play, followed by helping children to reflect on their play experiences and then encouraging them to build on earlier experiences through replay."
During the “play” the teacher simply observes, it is not until the debriefing stage that the teacher takes an active role, facilitating reflection. Wasserman says, “the teacher uses the play experience as a basis for promoting reflection and increasing children’s understanding of the ‘big ideas’.”
As we’re learning about how to take care of our bodies, specifically by eating healthy foods, we tried this out and it was a lot of fun! I dumped a bin of play food out on the carpet and let my kiddos go!
As they were playing and exploring, they engaged in some interesting dramatizations. The picture below, showing three boys was an especially interesting conversation. The little boy in the middle said, “You have to eat this orange, it will make you have lots of energy and when you have lots of energy you can run fast, faster than a cheetah!” The little boy on the left replied, “But I don’t like oranges, I want to eat this ice cream cone, it’s my favorite!” The little boy on the right said, “Go ahead, but you won’t be as fast as us!”
After playing, we paused and had a whole group discussion about the foods. Then we read The Edible Pyramid by Loreen Leedy. We discussed the different food groups on the pyramid and how much you should consume of each group.
Then we re-played with the food. Th kiddos were putting the food into groups according to the pyramid and engaging in more dramatizations. One little girl said, “Do you really need butter on your waffles? Butter is from the bad group, it won’t make you healthy!”
I sent students back to their seats where they had plates of food from each of the categories on the food pyramid.
Before students could take a bite of their yummy snacks, they had to wait for my instructions. I would say, “You can now eat the thing on your plate from the dairy group! Should you eat a lot of this or just a little bit to stay healthy?” and continued for each of the food groups. It was a great way to see if they understood how foods were grouped and what foods were the healthiest. Quite possibly the most fun check for understanding we’ve done in a long time!
During the “play” the teacher simply observes, it is not until the debriefing stage that the teacher takes an active role, facilitating reflection. Wasserman says, “the teacher uses the play experience as a basis for promoting reflection and increasing children’s understanding of the ‘big ideas’.”
As we’re learning about how to take care of our bodies, specifically by eating healthy foods, we tried this out and it was a lot of fun! I dumped a bin of play food out on the carpet and let my kiddos go!
As they were playing and exploring, they engaged in some interesting dramatizations. The picture below, showing three boys was an especially interesting conversation. The little boy in the middle said, “You have to eat this orange, it will make you have lots of energy and when you have lots of energy you can run fast, faster than a cheetah!” The little boy on the left replied, “But I don’t like oranges, I want to eat this ice cream cone, it’s my favorite!” The little boy on the right said, “Go ahead, but you won’t be as fast as us!”
Then we re-played with the food. Th kiddos were putting the food into groups according to the pyramid and engaging in more dramatizations. One little girl said, “Do you really need butter on your waffles? Butter is from the bad group, it won’t make you healthy!”
I sent students back to their seats where they had plates of food from each of the categories on the food pyramid.
Before students could take a bite of their yummy snacks, they had to wait for my instructions. I would say, “You can now eat the thing on your plate from the dairy group! Should you eat a lot of this or just a little bit to stay healthy?” and continued for each of the food groups. It was a great way to see if they understood how foods were grouped and what foods were the healthiest. Quite possibly the most fun check for understanding we’ve done in a long time!
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Alternate Endings to Familiar Stories Through Play
One of the most fascinating things about allowing students to "play things out" is being surprised by what they come up with! We read Marcus Pfister's The Rainbow Fish last week as our read aloud. My kids love this story! After we read it, I color copied the characters from the book, laminated them and put them on popsicle sticks. I put the homemade puppets and book on a table during centers and just let my kiddos play. For anyone who isn't familar with the original story, the Rainbow Fish is the only fish in the ocean that has beautiful shiny scales, all of the other fish want just one of his beautiful scales but the Rainbow Fish is too proud to share. Left lonely and with no friends, he seeks the advice of a wise octopus. The octopus tells him to share his scales with the other fish, he won't be the most beautiful in the ocean anymore but he'll truly be happy. After giving my students a space to create their own story and ending to a familar text, they independently created a new version of the Rainbow Fish. I sat down and observed, this is how they re-told the story:
The octopus was secretly evil. He told the Rainbow Fish, he shouldn't share his shiny scales because they were magic and he should keep the magic for himself. The Rainbow Fish felt bad and knew he had to take down the evil octopus and become the good king of the ocean. He gave all of his friends a shiny scale and formed the Shiny Scale Army. The Shiny Scale Army captured the evil octopus and put him somewhere where he would never bother other fish in the ocean again. The Shiny Scale Army just wants to play in peace with all fish and creatures in the ocean, even if they don't have shiny scales. They just want to have fun!
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Grown Up Books
A wonderful professor I've had the pleasure of taking courses with two semesters in a row previously taught a course, Play and Learning, at the university where I'm working on my master's degree. It was not offered this semester but she was kind enough to share her syllabus from the course and the suggested readings. I purchased two of the books and have gotten some really great ideas from them! The books are Serious Players in the Primary Classroom: Empowering Children Through Active Learning Experiences by Selma Wasserman and A Child's Work: The Importance of Fantasy Play by Vivian Gussin Paley
Welcome!
Welcome to my blog! I am so happy to have a platform to discuss and expose what I am most passionate about as an early childhood teacher...PLAY! Appropriate for the first post on this blog, I included the first of many podcasts that explain my beliefs about play!
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