How many of us actually take the time to listen to children? I feel that people often do not listen to children because they are "children." What they have to say does not matter. But that is completely not true at all. I believe that children who are listened to are the most successful. Those children feel that they are heard and their opinions matter. Children who are constantly ignored will always feel that they should never say what they feel and they will feel insecure about themselves. I actually feel that children have really interesting things to say about many things.
I often have discussions with the children during circle time and when we are doing free play. They talk about many things; from interesting things that are happening at home and using their imagination. We also want children to use their words to voice what they feel to others, but what use is it when the children are not listened to when it comes to voicing their feelings to adults? My focus when working with children is always making sure that they are heard. I always want to make sure that what they have to say is important to me. I never want to make any child feel that I do not care about what they have to say.
We use voice notes and running records as a way to assess children. It is hard to get what they are saying on paper because what they are saying is random and we are often not prepared for what they are about to say. I try to remember what the children say and write it down, luckily I have my phone handy and use app to get all their documents.
My favorite thing about assessing children is that you can see the progress that they make from one period to another. It is easier for me to use pictures because I can always go back to it later on. The hard part about assessing children is how much of it is forced? Sometimes I have to get the children to redo what they were doing so I can get it on camera.
Hi Monica,
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I love about my job is having conversations with the children. Often times they lead the conversation to unexpected places and/or make amazing observations that I wouldn't have thought of. It is also incredible to observe their thought process, and how much more open minded they can be. Children can also find the most creative ways to interact with the environment and the objects around them, that we BORING ADULTS could ever think of. I'm constantly surprised by the children that I work with.
As lead teachers though, when we create a planned activity with objectives and the intention of teaching something, things might not become so open ended sometimes.
All children need to be heard, but when you have 20 to 30 children trying to be heard it can also become difficult. How can you make sure that all children are heard?
Pictures and work samples are great tools, specially to document progress overtime. I never asked a child to re-do something on camera, that is interesting. Do you think it is still authentic assessment if you ask them? In what context does that happen?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts,
Dani
Like Dani said above, I agree, too that my favorite part of my job are the conversations I have with the children. There are times where I'll just sit back and listen to a conversation they're having on their own, just to see what kind of things they come up with, even if it makes no sense at all. It's funny to see and hear how creative they can be. I thought it was interesting how you would sometimes have a child re-do something in order to catch it on camera. In that sense, it's almost staged - is it still considered authentic if you tell them to do it?
ReplyDeleteAloha Monica,
ReplyDeleteWonderful post! There are some days that it's difficult to understand the children. In order for children to get their message across, they will need to have a good vocabulary. When we take the time to listen and understand children, they will surprise us with their stories and their knowledge.
Hi Monica,
ReplyDeleteHow does taking the time to actively listen to children, to get to the heart of their ideas like Vivian Paley was trying to do, play into our discussion on assessment? If we do not take the time to listen, can we ever truly say we have an idea of what the children know? How does the role of curiosity come into play here, not just in terms of curriculum but also in terms of knowing and wanting to understand the children we work with?
I saw in one of your comments to Geena how you did not think that assessment was useful for the child. After reading about how Sweden approaches assessment as well as New Zealand, what do you think now? How can we keep children at the center of our work in regards to assessment? How can we take what we learn through the assessment process and help the children grow? In what ways can we include the children more into the overall assessment process so that they are the ones who have control over their own learning experiences? Thanks!