Come and Read!

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“…reading continues to provide an escape from a crowded house into an imaginary room of one’s own.”
Anna Quindlen
How Reading Changed My Life

Sometimes I just love rainy weekends. When it’s sunny and warm outdoors, I feel a compulsion to get outside and ‘do something’…walk, shop, or visit a museum with my husband. But on rainy, nasty-weather days I don’t feel any sense of guilt about staying indoors, finding a cozy spot, usually on my soft living-room couch, and hunkering down with a good book.

In his book, The Reading Environment, Aidan Chambers wrote, “All reading has to happen somewhere. And every reader knows that where we read affects how we read: with what pleasure and willingness and concentration. Reading in bed, feeling warm and comfortable and relaxed, is different from reading on a cold railway station waiting for a train, or in the sun on a crowded beach, or in a library full of other readers, or alone in a favorite chair at ten o’clock in the morning.” He suggests, “ If we want to be skillful in helping other people, especially children, become willing avid, and –most important of all-thoughtful readers, we need to know how to create a reading environment that enables them.”

Early childhood classes, in these assessment-driven times, are inundated with programs to rush students into early literacy and ensure that instruction is in tune with standards. Children’s days are filled with word-study programs, leveled books, and tearless handwriting. It often seems to me that, within this rush towards academics, we’re losing sight of the true goal. The joy of reading and engaging in intimate discussions is somehow being left behind in the dust.

By providing a cozy reading spot in their classrooms, teachers can
encourage children to join the world of book lovers and conversationalists. This comfy, space invites children to curl up with a good book or to have a quiet, private conversation with a friend. This doesn’t have to take up much space. In fact the idea is to make it small and private. It just takes a little bit of ingenuity and reimagining of the classroom environment.

My best role model for carving out classroom reading nooks is my friend and colleague Connie Norgren. She’s a master at designing private, inviting reading corners in rooms where space is limited. She created in her classroom the same inviting spaces for reading that she has in her own warm and comfortable home.

It’s really a matter of priority. If we are attempting to foster literacy in our classes, then it’s a no-brainer that we should value the child’s need and right to find a wonderfully conducive spot to relax with a book, sit alone to daydream a bit or have a private conversation with a friend. Here’s an example of how Connie helped a kindergarten teacher set up such a space in her classroom:

If you don’t have small couches and easy chairs available, big pillows on the floor can provide soft seating. Look carefully at the photo. You will notice that the space is not packed with books. There are just enough books for easy browsing. This is also a reading corner decorated by the children. A child-created sign invites students to “Come and Read”. Above the sign is a reading frieze, made by a group of children during choice time. This wonderful piece of art is filled with magazine images and children’s drawings of people reading. The students have collaborated with the teacher in making this THEIR reading room!

I created a private reading room in my kindergarten class by using a large refrigerator carton. (I actually do think that I first got this idea from Connie!). I cut out an arched entrance, put in two high windows (purposefully high so that the children inside would not be distracted by other classroom activities), cut out a circle to serve as a skylight in the roof and covered the floor with a big pillow. One year I covered it with a carpet square. A carpenter who lived near the school volunteered to construct a wooden frame for the box, making it sturdy enough to last a few years. My rule for using this new ‘room’ was that it was limited to two children at a time and it was a sitting space, not a standing space.

Children love cuddling up with a stuffed animal or two. I remember peeking in and seeing Erika, a quiet, shy child, very seriously reading a book to a stuffed bunny rabbit, carefully being sure to show him the illustration before turning each page.

I sometimes added little flashlights so that children could zero in on words and the pictures. This was an especially popular activity around Halloween time when we were reading In A Dark Dark Wood. During shared reading, I would turn down the lights and use the flashlight as a ‘pointer’. At Choice Time, children would then have fun bringing the big book into the “reading room” along with the flashlight. It wasn’t unusual to hear spooky sound effects emanating from the box, as two giggly readers jazzed up their reading of the story!

Each year, the box changed a bit. One year, after visiting Reggio Emilia and seeing the interesting ways that mirrors were incorporated into their classroom environments, I “wallpapered’ the inside walls with Mylar to create a mirror effect. Other years I hung art posters or postcards. Sometimes the outside was decorated with drawings of scenes from favorite books. Children did these drawings during choice time as part of the “cozy reading room” choice. Other times they made new book jackets. For these, they first looked through books in the classroom library, picked one that they particularly liked, ‘reread’ the book to find a part of the story that would make a nice cover picture. I folded up paper for them so that it would make a book jacket. They then made the cover and added words to the jacket flap. The back flap had biographical information about the new jacket illustrator often including a photograph or self-portrait drawing! These new jackets were on put on display by the ‘reading room’.

When I worked with kindergarten teachers at The Children’s School in Brooklyn, they put their own personal spin on the refrigerator box idea. Since they were in the midst of a folk tale study, they invited children, during choice time, to decorate the outside of the box with images from favorite folk tales.

My last few years of classroom teaching, I ‘looped up’ to first grade with my kindergarten classes. The first time that I did this, I asked the children, at the end of kindergarten, to think about how we would change the arrangement of the classroom to turn it into a first grade room. We listed what would stay and what would be packed away for my next kindergarten group. I knew that I had instilled in them the specialness of curling up with a book when I finished hearing their responses. There was one loud and clear, unanimous decision. We MUST bring our cozy quiet reading room in first grade!

THROW AWAY THE WORKSHEETS AND NURTURE YOUNG SCIENTISTS

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Science education in our public schools, or rather the dearth of science education in the schools, has recently been popping up in the news. This January, the NY Times featured an article that highlighted the decreasing number of science fairs in schools around the country

Twenty-five years ago, in a speech to the children of America after the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, President Reagan said, “they  [the astronauts] had that special grace, that special spirit that says, “Give me a challenge and I’ll meet it with joy” They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths.” In his speech, he referred to “the process of exploration and discovery. It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons.”

What a vast disconnect exists between presidential aspirations for children and experiences to encourage discovery and exploration that are often omitted from our early childhood programs. It is so easy to tap into the natural curiosity of young children and to turn 5 and 6 year olds on to the excitement of scientific discoveries. Unfortunately, it is also possible to give them a negative association with science.

My kindergarten children were scheduled for a weekly Science class. Each Wednesday, they emitted a collective groan when I told them that it was time to walk across the corridor to the science room. This confused me since they loved spending time in the many science-based centers during our choice time. They were eager to investigate what happened after they mixed up a bubble-solution and poured it into the water-play tub. They figured out how to create their own magnets and then constructed trails of paper clip magnet chains to pull around the classroom. They were natural scientists and yet, here they were, complaining about a class that should have been a highlight of their week.

I decided to begin a discussion about their responses to this class when we had our morning meeting one Wednesday. I asked them what they were learning about in science. “The body (almost moaned rather than spoken) ” “That’s such an interesting topic!”, I responded enthusiastically. No! It’s soooo boring!”  Well, as we continued this discussion, I was told that they were “learning about the body and bones” mainly through teacher lectures and, that their ‘hands on’ activity’ consisted of cutting out and then pasting together onto another paper, a worksheet reproduction of a human skeleton. I absolutely did not want them to be left thinking that this was what it meant to learn about science so I shared with them a personal memory of the time, just a few years ago, when I fractured my ankle and had a cast put on my leg. This opened up the floodgate for stories about sisters, cousins, aunts and friends who had casts and broken bones, so I asked them if they would be interested in seeing the x-rays that I saved and, of course, there was great interest.

The next day I brought in my x-rays and projected them onto the wall. The children were so excited and interested that we moved the overhead projector to an “x-ray center” at Choice Time so that they could look at them more closely and trace them. I then began collecting books on anatomy, bones, our body and we began a ‘research’ reading center.

This small exploration grew into a full-blown class inquiry study.

We collected a variety of (cleaned) animal bones, looked inside a bone, read about healthy foods to make bones strong, visited a local pediatrician’s office, and interviewed the doctor. Creating and opening a doctor’s office in the dramatic play center followed this up. I sent out a request to everyone I knew who worked in a medical office or a hospital and we received lots of contributions from stethoscopes and doctors robes to eye charts and ace bandages.

We went to the fish store across from the school and brought back fish bones to observe and draw. These delicate bones were compared to the big beef bones and chicken bones that we had collected. The computer teacher heard about this interest in animal bones and surprised us by visiting the class and bringing with her the skeleton of a snapping turtle!

As the children became more ‘expert’ on the topic, we turned the art center into a skeleton-making center. One group of children used papier maché to make a skull. Then, over the course of almost two weeks, our life-sized skeleton was constructed. A variety of recycled materials and plasticine was used. One day, I stopped by to see how the skeleton was progressing. I noticed that wooden craft sticks were used to make the fingers. I looked at the hands and then looked at my hands, bending my fingers. I really didn’t need to do or say anything else. Four ‘skeleton-makers’ began bending their own fingers and an intense discussion began about how they could make their skeleton’s fingers bend. I suggested that they return to one of their ‘research’ books and look at the diagram of a hand. Revision! My help was enlisted to break the sticks into three parts and they were once again pasted onto the mural paper.

After the skeleton was completed, the parts of the body were labeled. A group of children surveyed the class to come up with a name, which was written next to the model. Our Mr. Tall Bones was then displayed in the hallway outside the classroom along with their sketches and descriptions.  We celebrated by making Bone Soup.

This became one of those serendipitous studies, unexpected but meeting the immediate needs and interests of the children. In the course of this mini study, children had many reasons and opportunities to write, count, use nonfiction books as ‘research’ sources, listen to read aloud texts, sing (…the neck bone’s connected to the shoulder bone…), play in the dramatic play center, and use ‘primary’ materials such as x-rays, bones and doctor’s tools. They even spontaneously created a huge, flat skeleton using the wooden unit blocks.

What pleased me most about this study and the centers that accompanied it is that the children were developing an excited and positive attitude about themselves as young scientists. They were, as Ronald Reagan recalled, taking part in “the process of exploration and discovery” as they expanded their own horizons.

PLAY’S THE THING…

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The NY Times has a wonderful article about the importance of play in today’s paper, Play’s the Thing… http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/garden/06play.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

I think that it’s really worth reading every line of the article and discussing it with colleagues and parents. Unfortunately, the writer, Hilary Stout, really doesn’t take it the next step: How do we support play in school and keep to the new learning standards?
What is the role of the teacher in children’s classroom play? How can the teacher scaffold children’s play without presenting ‘tasks’ and directives? What should classroom play look like in kindergarten? In first grade? In second grade?
The article describes how one parent’s interest was “piqued when she toured her local elementary school…before Benjamin (her son) was to enroll in kindergarten. She still remembered her own kindergarten classroom from 1985: it had a sandbox, blocks and toys. But this one had a wall of computers and little desks.” “There’s no imaginative play anymore, no pretend,” Ms. Wilson said with a sigh.
It is SO important for early childhood educators to think about and discuss this dilemma. What do we think about this?
I REALLY hope that you will send in your thoughts, concerns, suggestions, etc. after reading the article!

Following the Children’s Life Force

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Recently, a teacher new to teaching kindergarten asked me how she should know what centers and materials to offer children during Choice Time. She wondered what the “trick” is to planning for Choice Time.

I think that the most important aspect to planning choice time centers is for the teacher to be a good listener and observer. For example, in one class that I visited, the children were playing with Unifix cubes. They were making the line of cubes higher and higher. There was a lot of excitement. I walked over and exclaimed that the line of cubes seemed to be as tall as I am. I stepped over next to the tower. It reached my chin. One boy said, “wait” and got more cubes to add to it. (I actually had to put them on for him because, even though he got on tiptoes, he couldn’t reach. We kept adding one at a time until one of the children called out “Stop”. It was as tall as I am.

That was the perfect opportunity for the teacher to have the children share this experience at the Choice Time share meeting. She could start ‘wondering’ how many cubes might reach as tall as Sho Yin? How many Teddy Bears (little plastic teddy bear counters) could go from one end of Sho Yin to the other end? Hmm, maybe she would have to stretch out on the rug to be measured with Teddy Bears! What else could we use to measure Sho Yin? The teacher might start writing down the children’s suggestions and then come up with a great idea to share with the children. “How about a measuring center?” “What would we need to add to this center?” That is the birth of a new center that has grown right out of the teacher’s observations and interactions.

The children begin to pick up on the teacher’s interest in what is happening during Choice Time. They notice that she is writing down notes of interesting observations and often sharing these with the class. They will notice how she gets new ideas that grow out of these observations. If this happens enough, children will begin making suggestions for centers based on what they notice happening in their centers. One year a group of kindergarten children in my class asked to share their great idea at meeting. I really didn’t know what to expect. “Let’s make a castle in the Pretend Center!” Well, this made complete sense. For some reason, this class of children had a particular interest in castles, kings and queens, princes and princesses. Many castles had been constructed in the block center. I’m not quite sure where this particular interest came from. I had been reading the chapter book, The Wizard of Oz, to them and maybe this sparked the interest. I’m not quite sure but they certainly were enthusiastic about this topic. I said that they certainly could make a Castle Center but that we should first find out more about what was needed. Over the next few days I read some fairy tale picture books aloud (the version of Snow White illustrated by Nancy Eckholm Burkert was a favorite), and I found a shared reading book about a King (I can’t remember the title!). We made lists of what we needed in terms of dressing up and also decorations and then opened up an art center for making crowns, capes, wands, fancy-colored windows (dipping napkins in a water and food coloring mixture) and turning two chairs into fancy thrones. Signs were also made and hung up all around the center. Scrolls became important. There was a lot of writing important messages and proclamations on paper turned into scrolls. When all of this was done, the Castle Center was officially opened. It was interesting to observe the children playing there because, in many ways, it was the same type of play that they did pre-Castle…but with an added zest! It was the children’s incredible imagination and life force along with my openness to listening and taking their ideas seriously that opened up a new center for exploration and play.

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Is Kindergarten Ready for the Child?

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Have you ever had a parent ask you if her/his child is ready for kindergarten? Have you ever heard a teacher complain about a child who doesn’t have enough academic skills to be in kindergarten?

I’ve been wondering a lot about these two questions.

Checking online, I found one after the other websites-advising parents about kindergarten readiness. Some sites discuss the pros and cons of redshirting, keeping a child back from kindergarten so as to give (usually) him an extra ‘edge’ in the grade and also giving him time to develop the ability to sit still for extended periods – time for hours of reading, writing, phonics and math.

My big question is this: Shouldn’t kindergarten be ready for all children?

Shouldn’t teachers (and administrators, of course) understand that within this kindergarten age group there’s a wide range of development, physically, socially and intellectually?

New York State, among many others, has adopted the Common Core Standards (a document that defines, grade by grade, what children should be able to do in reading, phonics, writing and math by the end of the school year.) These prescriptions are all about ‘academics’. Social and emotional issues are not even addressed. I could go on and on criticizing all different parts of these ‘standards’ but unfortunately this is what schools must consider when thinking about classroom practices.

What I’m noticing is that many schools seem to be feeding the fire of this hysteria by assuming that kindergarten must now, because of the standards, become the ‘new first grade.’ Hence come the fears and anxieties of parents who naturally want to protect their children and insure their school success.

However, I strongly believe that teachers (and administrators) should analyze these standards and then revisit the writings of John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky. It is possible to create classrooms where children have many opportunities to learn through exploration, play, exciting inquiry projects, singing songs, reading funny big book stories together and also meet the standards. This can, and should, be a class where there is an environment of stress-free learning and fun.

When I work as a consultant in kindergarten classes, I always stress the importance of keeping inquiry-based explorations and play at the core of the child’s day. Reading, writing and math workshops certainly can by incorporated into the program but they shouldn’t be the focus of the child’s day. When I was teaching, I certainly did have those workshops, but my day always began with a group meeting that flowed into choice time centers. I put a lot of thought into planning centers that challenged the children while they were playing and having fun. This started our school day with energy and good feelings.
Now, returning to those standards for kindergarten, here are some thoughts:

Why not sing Down by the Bay, Jenny Jenkins and many of the other rhyming songs, where children need to listen for and generate rhymes? Won’t children then be demonstrating an understanding of how to “recognize and produce rhyming words” and have fun at the same time?

Why not introduce an inquiry into the names of classmates? Children will gain contextual practice in recognizing alphabet letters. They’ll have many phonological and phonetic experiences when they clap out the syllables of the names and make interesting comparisons and ‘noticings’ (“Look! Akhira and Alexandra both start with A and end with A” “Lee only has 3 letters and it has one clap. Barbara has more letters and it has 3 claps”. “If we take away Pam’s P and change it for an S…its Sam! Pam and Sam have rhyming names!”) With teacher guidance, they begin learning the small, frequently used words that are hiding inside names (am is in Sam, and is in Randy, in is in Devin…).

Inquiry projects provide unlimited opportunities for teachers to keep an eye on helping children meet the standards. For example when children study the trees around the school, they get to make shape comparisons, measure tree trunks, see how leaves can float (if they’re lucky enough to have a water exploration center in the classroom!), learn how to use nonfiction texts to get new information By exploring a topic that is of interest and that is a part of their real world, children learn that they can use a variety of tools and strategies to look for answers to their questions. They become researchers!

If we were to judge how young children learn best by putting inquiry based learning on one side of a scale and hours of paper and pencil instruction on the other, I think that the result is a no-brainer. I believe that the scale would tip down on the side of inquiry. On the inquiry side children have fun while learning and practicing skills such as formulating and asking questions, recording information, purposefully using a variety of math strategies, working cooperatively in groups, and using many different avenues and materials for making discoveries.

When teachers move towards a constructivist approach, the knowledge and needs of the children becomes central. This is different than a teacher-led programmatic approach where the program goals are central and the children must adjust to them. By designing instruction based on the children’s prior knowledge there are more opportunities for children to feel successful. When a teacher gives children opportunities to explore areas that interest them, she is helping children develop a disposition to become self-directed life-long learners.

This is what kindergarten should be. In this type of classroom, kindergarten is ready for the child!

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A Choice Time roadmap… not a train schedule

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In the summer of 1996, I attended a one-week institute for educators in Reggio Emilia, Italy. At that conference, Carlina Rinaldi, director of the Reggio Emilia schools, said something that has reverberated for me again and again. To paraphrase her, she advised teachers that they should consider teaching using a road map to guide their instruction rather than a train schedule. A road map lets you know where you started, where you’re going and important routes and landmarks along the way. But more importantly, it also allows you to take detours for interesting explorations, always showing you how to get back onto the original road. A train schedule, on the other hand, doesn’t allow one to take more time exploring places and ideas that are particularly interesting. It keeps one from taking those detours that allow for interesting and sometimes mind-altering surprises.

Some years ago, Lucy Calkins, head of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, asked me if I would co-present a day for kindergarten teachers.. Lisa Ripperger was going to address writing workshop in kindergarten, Mary Ann Colbert was presenting the reading workshop and I was going to speak about choice time. When the three of us met to plan, Lisa and Mary Ann were able to plan together but I seemed to be the ‘odd man out’. I noticed that they were thinking about how their workshops changed and grew across the year. I began to wonder if I could use a similar paradigm to plan for a year of Choice Time. I’d like to share what I came up with. However, I think that it’s really important to consider this only as a possible Choice Time roadmap and not as a train schedule to follow.

Fall (September to December)

Since this is the start of the school year, my instructional focus for centers is on creating situations that will support conversation and also on helping children, often through direct demonstration, learn how to use and care for materials.
(I.e. unit blocks; water and sand implements such as funnels, tubes and different size cups; science tools such as magnifying glasses, droppers, shells; paint, crayons, markers, a selection of papers, glue, scissors and other possible art materials in the art center; a selection of math manipulatives; and independently using the headphones, tapes and tape recorder in the listening center).

At centers, children can explore the many possibilities for using a variety of equipment and materials. They also have time to work independently and in small groups, sharing materials and ideas with each other. I have noticed that activities and constructions, at this time of the year, are quite often ‘of the moment’ and might last only for one day. Children are usually ready to explore something new the next day. They are also just learning to work in small groups and in partnerships where they need to share materials.

By giving children opportunities to share their work and choice time experiences with the class, and by providing places in the room to display children’s work, both projects that are completed and work in-progress, the teacher is encouraging children to see themselves as competent explorers.

Winter (January to March)
By this time of the year, my instructional focus is more towards giving children opportunities to work on expanding their projects. Children are encouraged to build onto a project. A few examples are adding more details or color to a drawing or painting. They might create signs and add people and animals to a block structure. In my class and in other classes I’ve seen the dramatic play area transformed into a doctor’s office, a post office, a castle, a grocery store and even a playground. The water table becomes an exciting center for making new discoveries just by adding new materials such as food coloring, ice cubes, snow or soap suds. I remember a time when a group of children used the Cuisenaire rods and small wooden ‘people’ from the block center to create a village in the sand table. What is so exciting is that the possibilities are endless depending upon the children’s interests.

By now, children are often beginning to label projects and to use print more naturally in the different centers, such as writing telephone messages in the dramatic play center or making a ‘scientist’s observation book’ in the science center. Children might be becoming more involved in planning together before beginning their play. The teacher would probably notice a greater use of dialogue within the centers as children share ideas and negotiate compromise.

Spring: April – June
For me, this was a particularly exciting time of the year. My instructional focus for Choice Time now included supporting children’s increased engagement in dialogue and their growing ability to use writing and reading as part of their choice time projects.

During this time of year, I found that it was important for children to have more time in their centers. They often stayed in the same center for at least two days.
My centers would quite often give children opportunities to expand on classroom inquiries in social studies, science and chapter books that I read to them. Some examples of this were a group project to design and construct a bridge when we were involved in a bridge study. The group spent five days working on this project, drawing bridge plans, revising, building and using toy cars and people to play with their bridge. After I read the chapter book, My Father’s Dragon, the children asked if they could make their own 3-D map of Wild Island. I gave them a large piece of cardboard to work on in the art center. Different children worked on this project each day, referring to the book to be sure that they were putting everything in the right order. They labeled the different parts of the map, made arrows to show what came first, made ‘pop up’ people and animals and, as you can imagine, had many opportunities to resolve conflicts within the group!

The science center, one year, led to an interesting child-created project that combined science discoveries, literature and art. After a few of weeks of open, self-directed explorations with magnets in the science center, a group of children thought of adding a story box center to choice time. The children used empty shoeboxes to recreate scenes from favorite storybooks. They folded paper to make people who could stand up and glued paper clips to the bottom of each figure. They then used their magnets to move the figures in their boxes, creating magnetic theaters. This activity was inspired by my daughter’s store-bought magnetic theater (she called it her ‘Magnetic Land’) that I had shared with them earlier in the school year.

By the spring, children tend to work independently and more self-sufficiently. Now the teacher has more opportunities to observe children working at their centers during choice time. At this time of the year, I’m consistently impressed by the incredible progress children have made in working cooperatively and in using classroom materials with so much creativity. Now when children use print within their projects they are using more conventional spelling for the high-frequency sight words that we have been exploring during shared reading and writing workshop. I also notice the dialogue that takes place during share meetings becoming more sophisticated and descriptive. Children listen to each other more attentively and, in their responses, exhibit a greater ability to partake in the give and take of conversations.

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This is, of course, only a road map and not a train schedule for planning Choice Time across the year. To make all of this work well, I assume the involvement of a teacher who enjoys observing and listening to children at play.

This teacher is eager to develop a lively, interactive and stimulating classroom. She/he values individuality and improvisation, and understands that there are many playful, age-appropriate roadways leading towards developing children with strong literacy and mathematical skills. This teacher has also created a classroom environment that has allowed children to develop positive self-images. Through a year of working cooperatively in inquiry-based Choice Time centers, they have learned to value and respect the contributions of the group. These centers provide a road map to the world around them, which offers endless opportunities for being inspired.

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Sharing!

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Sharing our thoughts and ideas with friends is so important to all of us. I recently discussed an Amy Tan book that I had just finished reading with the members of my small book club. After reading the book, I thought that I had a pretty solid interpretation and opinion of the story but during our discussion, I realized that there were many aspects of the text that I hadn’t even thought about. When I got back home, I went right back to the book to reread particular passages that my friends referred to in our conversation. I needed to revise a bit of my original interpretation and assessment of the book!

Children too need time to share their discoveries, their artwork, their constructions and their dramatic play experiences. After Choice Time, it’s so productive and supportive of children’s ability to listen and respond to others experiences and ideas if we leave time for a group share meeting. Perhaps something unexpected or exciting happened at the art center or an exciting discovery was made at the water table. Was a new math game invented at the math center?

When the children and teacher meet for post-Choice Time-share children might be encouraged and enticed into choosing an activity the next day that they hadn’t previously considered trying. We are also reaffirming by sharing peer examples the idea that, during Choice Time, we honor and encourage innovation, collaboration and exploration.

As my good friend, Julie Diamond, wrote in a note to me, interest in trying new centers “can be further expanded when teachers find places in the room to display work after the meeting – time discussion”.

Keeping the discussed work up for a while allows children to continue this discussion, ask each other questions, think of what they might possibly do at the same center. It’s also a good idea to have areas of the classroom where Choice Time projects can be displayed…an empty shelf, a bulletin board, even a homemade shelf. My colleague, Connie Norgren, created shelves for her children’s woodworking projects by using pieces of cardboard and string. She hung these temporary display shelves on a pegboard. (see photo)

In some ways, Choice Time follows the workshop structure that is used by the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. We begin at a group meeting with a brief ‘minilesson’, then the children have time for their ‘independent’ play and explorations, and we bring closure with our share meeting. It’s absurd to have to justify exploration and play for young children. However, if you have difficultly ‘justifying’ this very important part of the early childhood curriculum, you could call it “ Investigative Workshop” or “Exploration Workshop” instead of Choice Time. If that’s what it takes to make it work for you, go for it!

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A priority in Kindergarten?

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I’ve had some difficulty writing an entry this week because I’ve been rather depressed about the state of kindergartens in New York City schools. It’s becoming a cliché to say that they are becoming more and more like first grade but there does seem to be a lot of truth to that thought.

When I speak with administrators who have had Bank Street early childhood training, who understand how important play, inquiry and opportunities for social interactions are for young children and who STILL eliminate all opportunities for this to happen in their schools, I really do wonder what is happening? Why isn’t choice time and inquiry a priority for kindergarten classrooms?

Perhaps it has to do with the way that Choice Time is interpreted. I’ve been wondering about how my idea of Choice Time differs from what I’ve been seeing when I visit many kindergarten classes.

I always tried to encourage children to ‘think of the possibilities’. What can happen at this center? What’s the potential for these materials? What might we add to the center to broaden the potential? What center just isn’t going anywhere and what should we do about that? Should we add new materials? Should we just pack up the center and move on?

This was often a topic of discussion that I had with the children. Sometimes we charted ideas – (i.e. Here Are Some New Ideas for What We Might Do At the Sand Table). Other times, it was just an informal discussion that we had at meeting or among the participants at a particular center.

I don’t mean to imply that every Choice Time center, every day, was an earth-moving experience for the children or for me. What I am saying is that I always encouraged children and myself to think about how we could have new ideas about how to use materials and how the addition of new materials changed what children could do at a center.

Don’t we want children to become thoughtful, inquisitive readers, writers and mathematicians? Isn’t it logical to support these behaviors through play and exploration at Choice Time?

CLICK HERE to make a comment. I invite all readers (teachers,students, parents, grandparents, etc.) to leave comments.  It would be wonderful to hear what you have to say so we can have more of a dialogue on the subject.

Improvisation

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We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eliot (“Little Gidding” from Four Quartets

My kindergarten class was studying bridges and because of their interest in the topic and the multitude of questions that kept coming up in class, this became, surprisingly, a yearlong project. We visited many bridges, returning to sites to answer questions and get more information.

As the study progressed, the construction of bridges in the block center became more and more elaborate. It seemed as though the space allotted in the classroom for block building was becoming too limited for their elaborate suspension bridges and often-collapsing moveable bridges. I began to notice that the “Pretend” center, abutting the block center, was empty each day. Nobody was picking this once very popular activity at Choice Time. I thought that this might be a time to pack up that center and extend the space of the block center, allowing for bigger constructions and for more children to work together in this center at one time.

I presented my observations the idea for eliminating the dramatic play center to the children at our next class meeting fully expecting a unanimous agreement. No! The children were unanimously AGAINST this plan! “What about making the Pretend Center smaller and the block center bigger?” Sarah asked. “But” I wondered out loud, “What could you play in a small pretend center?” “A store, “ Zeke suggested and excitement broke out. “Yes, yes, yes, let’s make a store!” What had I unleashed? I hadn’t anticipated this turn of events!

What ensued was two days of discussion at our class meetings about what kind of store could work in a small space. One child suggested that it could be the kind of store that the neighborhood has on the streets in the weekend. A stoop sale! At last, the decision was made to have a small bookstore. I said that if we were going to turn the pretend center into a bookstore, then we needed to do some research, so we arranged to visit a local bookstore.zeke-at-bookstore

On our field trip the children drew the inside and outside of the store and interviewed the workers and storeowner. We bought an ABC book to add to our class library. What followed were a few weeks of bookstore preparations. (Connie Norgren, a colleague, came into our classroom during one of our class discussions and she jokingly said to the children, “If it’s a little bookstore, maybe you should only have little books.” The idea caught fire immediately and hence K-239 Community Little Bookstore was born.

book-store-awningDuring the following exciting and busy time, many of the Choice Time centers became places where children were involved with bookstore preparations.

Block Center In the block center, the children switched from building bridges to building a bookstore. It was, at first, almost as though they were using the blocks to create a map of the Community Bookstore. I supported this work by taping up photos of the bookstore from our trip and also hanging up some of the children’s observational drawings. The store that we visited had recently added a small café and so a basket filled with cups, plates, utensils and fabric was added for the café. Paper, index cards, post-its, tape, pencils and markers were also available in this center so that signs, labels, menus and other print and pictures might be created. Although the Pretend Center was not in use, the addition of the café seemed to create a dramatic play environment in the block-building center.

Book-making Center: Because the children decided to only have little books in the bookstore, we set up a center where they could make small books to add to the bookstore collection. We had recently been looking at ABC books in our reading centers and the children seemed particularly interested in writing tiny ABC books for their store. I asked them what they might need at this center and they came up with this list: little blank books with enough pages for the whole alphabet (I prepared these), some ABC books for them to look at, dictionaries (we had a nice collection of picture dictionaries in class and the children loved looking through these) and abc charts. I also added paper and a small stapler in case they wanted to make their own booklets.

Sign Center: Children in this center made signs and labels for the store. They made labels for different sections (they decided on the categories after looking through the books that had been collected and sorted), made a sign with the hours of operation, and they made a big, colorful sign with the name of the store. On our trip, the noticed that the store had an awning and so they constructed one using fabric from the art center and a wooden structure that previously served as a puppet theater. I didn’t need to provide a lot of materials for this center. I left some photographs from our field trip, some trip papers where children had recorded some of the store signs, paper, blank index cards, markers and crayons. At the start of center time, I met with this group to review what signs had been made the previous day and to generate ideas for signs that were still needed. This was a very popular center!

Store Poster and Advertising Center: In the classroom art studio, children made posters to hang in the store and also bookstore signs to post around our school. (As a result of these school signs, parents, children and teachers from the school community began dropping in to donate tiny books for our store!)

Library: Children looked through our classroom library for ‘little books’, which they then sorted into different categories. I provided small plastic baskets that they could use to sort the books. The children at the bookmaking center brought their books to these children so that they could be added to the collections.

Construction Center: A cash register was constructed and paper dollars and tin foil coins were cut out and ready for the opening of our new business. First I joined the children to look at photos of cash registers and together (shared drawing!) we made a design for one that they could build. I provided an empty carton along with the photos. The children worked near the art center so that they could get materials that they needed.

During choice time, there were some centers that did not have anything to do with our bookshop preparations. The sand table was still open as was the math and science centers. But for the few weeks of bookstore excitement, many children chose to pick centers connected with the bookshop, whether it was building, constructing, writing, drawing and painting, determining prices for books that were for sale (nothing more that 25 cents) or sorting books in the library.

There was a definite “bookstore buzz” in the room during Choice Time. When the store finally opened, we invited another kindergarten class to visit and buy books. Our 4th grade buddies came and we also opened the store to families on Family Friday morning. The children were all excited to talk about all of the different parts of the store and how they built it. However, after about a week of ‘playing bookstore’, interest waned and the bookstore was closed.

We returned to the bridge study. Interestingly, there was now a renewed interest in the Pretend Center, which reopened in its original space. Although it looked just as it did before the bookstore study, it became a choice time center where children were able to play and explore with a new and fresh perspective and with invigorated interest.

The teacher’s role is important in allowing this type of exploration to unfold. The teacher almost becomes an improviser, who can listen carefully to children and understand how to use their questions and comments as an impetus for introducing new projects and investigations. It’s important, however, not to jump quickly into a curriculum detour, but rather to give time for children’s’ ideas ‘percolate’. This will help the teacher determine if the enthusiasms are momentary or if they are interests that will withstand an in-depth exploration.

I’ve only described one example of how Choice Time and inquiry study can overlap, opportunities for using literacy skills can be integrated into children’s play, and how the interest, energy and enthusiasm of the children can unexpectedly ignite an interesting class inquiry project that works its way into Choice Time exploration and play.

CLICK HERE to make a comment. I invite all readers (teachers,students, parents, grandparents, etc.) to leave comments.  It would be wonderful to hear what you have to say so we can have more of a dialogue on the subject.

Awakening Joy in Creative Expression

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When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college- that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, “you mean they forget?”
Howard Ikemoto

Returning home from a school after discussing what is and is not ‘art’ with a group of teachers, I asked my husband, an artist, how he would define art. After a bit of thinking, he said “an intensely personal, charged, poetic and transcendent response to life”. In my discussion with the teachers, I said that to me, art represents an outlet for a unique and personal form of expression.

When my daughter was four years old, my family moved to Rome, Italy. The wife of the director of the American Academy very highly recommended a local nursery school, so my husband and I eagerly went to check it out. Everything was spotless and cheerful-looking. The walls were covered with children’s art – but all looking the same! Something was very wrong with that picture! We quickly said “thank-you” to the teacher and rushed outside, not knowing if we should laugh or cry. Luckily, we soon discovered a lovely school right near our home, where my daughter happily painted, drew, sculpted with clay, and returned home beautifully messy and full of stories about her day.

Now, more than thirty years later, it disturbs me when I go into classrooms and see walls filled with identical images of flowers, with pieces of colored paper pasted onto a teacher-made flower template, decorated ‘bubble letters’ representing a so-called artistic approach to learning the letter of the day, or row after row of colored-in worksheet pictures of farm animals. What do children take with them from this type of experience? Why is it that teachers still feel the need to control the outcome of what children produce when using paper, paste, glue, scissors and crayons? I’ve been told, on some occasions, that this type of activity is planned because it teaches children how to use scissors and to color inside the lines.

In discussing my thoughts about this type of proscribed activity with a wonderfully eager, yet anxious, teacher, I presented an alternate lesson for supporting young children as they learned to master the use of new art materials and tools. I suggested that children might each pick a square of colored paper and also be given a scissor. Before giving out the materials, the teacher would model how she cut squiggles and shapes from her own paper and also how she could tear shapes using the tips of her fingers. Then children could be invited to try it out on their own papers. While they are cutting and tearing, the teacher could gently show individual children how to turn their scissor to make the cutting easier while she marvels at the multitude of shapes that are being created.

Scissors could be collected and each child could be given a zip-loc bag labeled with his/her name and told that they were going to get their bags back tomorrow for something very exciting. Children could then return to the meeting area to share their responses to the activity and their ideas about what might be happening tomorrow.

The next day the teacher could return to her own zip loc bag and another colored paper (different color) and demonstrate how she arranges and rearranges her cutouts to make different kinds of designs, reacting out loud to her various designs so as to publicly share her thoughts with the group. Children could then each pick their own second sheet of colored paper, be given their baggies filled with cutout shapes from yesterday’s activity and go off to make their own arrangements. Talking, sharing and laughing at work tables is encouraged!

Once again, the shapes are returned to baggies, paper collected and children reconvene at meeting to discuss their experiences. Tomorrow they would get their baggies back for something very exciting!

The third day, the teacher could once again model arranging and rearranging her shapes but this time she would decide on one that she was particularly pleased with. Now she could demonstrate how she takes each shape, one at a time, and glues it to the paper so that she has a completed work of art. Children are now challenged to find their most pleasing design and to glue it to their papers.

If this work were displayed for the group to see, the discussion would probably be so much richer than any discussion about a series of identical flowers. The children have had experience cutting and pasting without the anxiety of keeping within the lines or making something look ‘just right’. They also would have had the pleasure of creating and sharing art that is uniquely their own.

Classrooms should have a neat and well-stocked art center that children can use independent of the teacher. All that is needed is a bookcase (I’ve sometimes used four milk crates tied together when I didn’t have a bookcase available) containing selections of paper, scissors, glue, crayons, perhaps some colored yarn, small mirrors, interesting found and recycled materials, chalk or pastels, watercolors, a basket of books with art reproductions, a small container of attractive art reproductions and museum postcards. New materials could be added throughout the year. If the teacher takes time, when needed, to introduce new materials or some strategies for using materials (i.e. paper-folding, clay creations, wood sculptures, collages, crayon etchings…) children can visit the art center at Choice Time and have the opportunity to go on their own artistic journeys. In this exciting classroom, the teacher takes on the role of a travel guide, encouraging children to make discoveries in an environment that invites experimentation and creativity.

Investigative learning can be messy, filled with trial and error experiences. It can be frightening for a teacher to give up the control that comes with whole-class, directed lessons that have clear, expected outcomes. Teachers who encourage inquiry and investigative play are always actively observing and assessing the progress of children. They take time to plan carefully for centers that both welcome and challenge children’s intellectual, social and academic growth. Bumps or turns in the road are welcomed as indicators of curiosity and are seen as wonderful possibilities for enriching and extending the curriculum.

If teaching is indeed an artful profession, then as Albert Einstein so wisely said, “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge”

In my next entry, I’d like to discuss some ideas for employing Choice Time centers for exploring one inquiry topic. I welcome ideas and stories from your classrooms!

CLICK HERE to make a comment. I invite all readers (teachers,students, parents, grandparents, etc.) to leave comments.  It would be wonderful to hear what you have to say so we can have more of a dialogue on the subject.