Plans: Our Learning Continues

Teacher's Reflection:

Once again, let's look closely at the work of the children with these thoughts in mind.

 
                                                   

 
This was her work from Thursday the 13th. WOW! Look at how she is now organizing her thinking and her spoken word  into more dynamic representation which is becoming more visible in her plans. Going from the left to right- the representation on the far left is her blocks, middle which appears like an upside down person is dress up to the right bottom is the sand box and directly above it is the dramatic play area. Interesting that she seen the dress up and the dramatic play areas as separate. LJ is clearly thinking through how best to represent and capture her spoken word into "written" symbolic representations.

D.K.'S PLANS:
In looking at the top plan of D.'K.'s that she is trying to capture the dramatic play area in her mind. She told us it was when it was a mess! Notice the huge shift in her work on Thursday. Like L.J.'s work D.K. is now becoming more organized in her thinking and connecting her thoughts with the symbolic word.

                                                  

In the bottom drawing look at the detail that she is now including. The object at the bottom left is the sandbox, to the far right is her representation for the dramatic play and the top center images are for the message area. She has used the round table and her representation of the desk as the symbol. When asked about all the marks that she has layered the plan with. It is "bugs".

T.T.'S PLANS:

The next series we would like to share with you are from T.T.'s. At first glance you may feel uncertain as to what you are seeing or what a dramatic shift lies within these three plans. Let us share with an inside view of T.T.'s plans.

In the top plan is the very first plan that he wrote. you will notice again how unorganized and how softly he wrote. Perhaps this was an indication of his being unsure of how to capture his thinking in this new formate. In the second plan he told us he wanted to do "0,1,0". Then abc's (for the abc puzzle). The 0,1,0 was his way of representing that he wanted to work with the numbers. This was the first time that he represented numbers in this way!

The bottom plan was done on 9-19-07. Note the "S" which he had assistance with however he added the small dots. Here he was telling us his plan for the morning was to work in the sandbox. S for sand and the dots were the
sand!
                                                    
                                                 

                                                 

K.F.'S PLANS
In looking at K's plan you will notice that in the first set he too was trying to organize his thinking in this new format. In his first plan his strategy was to use inventive spelling as he attempted to write blocks. Like many of the children K has found it more challenging as he tries to find a way to represent multiple areas as part of his plan.  In the bottom plan from 9-14 we find him making a huge leap as he uses graphic representations as the strategy of accomplishing his "writing" multiple areas of working. In the bottom plan the top right circle represents snacks (perhaps the snack table) the large square in the center represents the legos (which are in the block area on the large carpet) the square in the upper left corner represents blocks. Indeed a shift in his thinking can be observed.

                                      
                                                 
Reflection:
Each of these examples represent the children's thinking as they make it visible to us through our classroom ritual of the plans.