A Moment of Learning
Throughout our day, we observe many rich learning moments that reveal the children's thinking to us. Many of these are short moments, so we must be sensitive so that we can capture them. However short they are, they can be monumental within a child's learning process. We would like to share a brief but important moment of learning, the moment when K revealed to us that a shift in her thinking had occurred.
During a shared morning of work between the 4’s and 3’s classrooms, we observed the children who were engaged in the message area. Initially the children were creating jewelry, using paper and what the children call the rainbow string. It was interesting to watch
one of the 3’s interacting and following the work of the 4’s with great intensity.
While observing the dynamics of this play, I watched as K left the jewelry-making process and shifted toward writing on small pieces of paper.
Wondering why she had made this shift, I realized that the other girls in the classroom were busy preparing for a hula performance outside. Had she overheard the other girls? I speculated that this could be the case, for in the past we have observed her writing on a small pieces of paper. When asked about this, she explained that the writing was for everybody to come to the performance. Was she perhaps making tickets for everyone? This piece of the performance was of great interest to her. Is this what she was doing?
Continuing to watch her work, I saw a sudden change in what she was doing. She abandoned the ticket-making process for the creation of a list of who was coming to the performance.
What happened next was unexpected. I heard her asking:
K: “What’s your name, Ms. Leslie?”
I said, “Ms.Leslie”
K: “No, what’s your name, Ms Leslie?
Her emphasis on "name" led me to look closer at her work and to pause for a moment and think about the context of her question. In doing so, I noted the change in materials that she was using.
I asked, “Do you want to know how to spell my name?”
K: “Yeah.”
For each letter of my name that I shared with her, she created a symbol/letter. This was not in a hurried or whimsical fashion; each mark was made with great intention and thought. To the casual viewer, these would seem to be “merely” marks. However, something far more had occurred and was being revealed in this moment.
Click on the blue link below, and watch as K assigned a mark for each letter told to her. Notice that as she ran out of space, she made her symbols smaller to try to keep them together rather than putting them on another line. Why was that?
When K finished, she showed my name to me. A moment later, I heard K talking out loud.
K: "H's name." When I looked toward K, I found her looking toward the message boxes, copying H’s name. She would look at the message box, write a letter/symbol, and look over again, repeating the process until she was satisfied that she had all the letters/symbols from H's name represented on paper.
Once again, we found K assigning a letter to a corresponding symbolic form.
Teacher Reflections:
Children are constantly trying to make meaning of their world. During ages 4 and 5, we find them shifting from making meaning from verbal thinking to making meaning from written symbols. This is a complicated yet powerful experience for children. In our learning community, we continuously are supporting the child's learning processes by allowing them to experience the powerful functions of print. One way we do this is through our ongoing plan-making for our day. This process has had a major impact in many areas of our learning community, from literacy to the work in the atelier to the organization of thinking processes and expression of thoughts.
This moment with K allowed us to see into her theories about the printed word. K clearly knew that a spoken name is different in representation than a written name. We also saw K's confidence as she realized that each person has their own set of graphic symbols or representations that must be grouped in a particular arrangement in order for it to be called a name.
K seems to in the midst of a huge leap into the world of literacy and the written word, for we found that she had developed a theory around “names.” This was evident in her question, "What's your name, Ms. Leslie?" When I responded, "Ms. Leslie," she said, "No, what's your name, Ms. Leslie?" Clearly she wasn’t after the verbal spoken name; she wanted the symbols that would turn the spoken "Leslie" into the written "Leslie." Her theory became visible as she assigned a graphic symbol to each letter that I told her. Again, each mark was purposeful and intentional.
During this learning moment, K was making her thinking visible to us through her spoken and unspoken actions. We found K to be beginning to grasp the value of words/names in her world and environment. K nailed down the meaning or intentions of her work a few moments later when we observed her using the message boxes to scaffold and support her as she added H to the list of those coming to the performance.
She could have easily asked me for the information to spell H, but instead we found K solving this dilemma using her own resources -- looking at the message boxes nearby. This moment demonstrated to us a shift from relying on others to solving her own problems. K clearly is learning how to learn.
We have since observed K connecting and cycling through this theory of hers around names. Today she created a bracelet for Ms. Leslie that included a name tag. She again asked me for my name. As I said each letter to her, she repeated the letter and assigned a symbol. Earlier she constructed a book in which she began writing symbols and letters that were close approximations of actual letters. She clearly has emerged into the powerful world of words as she now is formulating theories about the function of words and the graphic representations that are assigned to make up words.
After observing this moment how might we support K with future provocations for learning?
Seeing K’s interest in the written word now beginning to unfold, it is important for us to continue connecting this new knowledge in meaningful ways for her. Perhaps in her plan-making, we could have her make lists for us. Perhaps at home, her parents could make a list of a couple of items that are needed from the store, such as milk (which has two letters from her name in it), etc. We will also be watching for her to make more closer approximations of how the letters look.
In this learning moment of K’s, we captured only one small slice of the thinking that is occurring in our classroom learning processes each day. These small moments will impact K's (and each of your children's) future learning for a lifetime.
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