What I enjoy most is listening to children discuss about things that they go through everyday. What really made me enjoy reading this weeks lesson was the curiosity that the children had. They all thought of cause and effect to the process that their letter goes through to get to America. They each discussed things that could make their letter arrive to their friends faster. Then they came up with ways to be able to communicate quicker with their friends in America.
Instead of giving children the answer to what they were discussing, the teacher gave them each a chance to have an idea about how their letter will get to their friends and what happens if it gets lost. This is an interest that teachers can use as a curriculum. Writing letters and mailing them. I think that it is important to base curriculum off of things that children are interested in, that way they will want to learn the material. This also makes things more fun for the children.
I enjoy listening to what children have to say about things. I often have discussions with the children about things. For example, I like to ask them about what they know about a certain topic. Many of them often use each others answers, but sometimes they will come up with their own things. That is how they learn; to think about it and to come up with their own answers and we help them understand it on their own.
In the reading, the teacher could've easily told them to email their friends or just call them on the phone. We hardly ever use the form of lettering writing. I think that we should teach children to write letters and to mail it to their friends, families, or even to themselves. I can imagine using this as a curriculum to teach children how we communicate with others.
Hi Monica,
ReplyDeleteI also had a bunch of wonderful ideas about writing letters with the children. I have a huge collection of postcards, and I still love getting written letters in the mail.
I remember a while ago one of the classrooms I work did a whole thing about letters. The children sent letters to their family members that lived far away. A mailman came in so the children could ask their questions, they learned math through stamps, and measuring how far their letters traveled, studied geography by mapping where their letters went, not to mention the value of literacy and art, and as you put it, communicating with others. Most people nowadays use electronic ways to communicate, and it is important for children to learn that there are other ways to communicate too. All the family members responded, and were asked to include a picture holding the kids letters, and they posted around the classroom.
When you listen to the children and ask them questions, do you do it as a group or individually more often? What do you think is the best way to have deeper discussions with children?
In this curriculum for example, what would you prefer: individual letters, or a group letter?
Thanks for sharing,
Dani
Aloha Monica,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post! It was nice to see the teacher see what each child's idea was instead of only focusing on a few ideas. Sometimes, teachers will only focus on a certain number of children to see their thoughts. When doing this, students will feel left out. When having a big class, how can we include all the children? Also, it was nice to see the teachers help the students to expand on their ideas. It went from sending their letter with a mail man to sending a letter through a fax machine.
Hi Monica,
ReplyDeleteI also agree that the teachers took a step back and allowed for the children to formulate their own ideas and answers. It is always easier for us to just blurt out the answers to the kids but what good does that do them? It has been a while since I worked in a preschool classroom so it is much different from what I am used to which is eight kids. I work with infants and toddlers so it is very different from a preschool class. Especially when I work with infants, i do give them the answer to label the word, feeling, etc. to them because they aren't talking yet. But for obvious reasons, you would not do the same for preschoolers.
Hi Monica,
ReplyDeleteYour post reminded me of a video I was able to watch in grad school called The Lightning Post Office, which was about how a first grade class set up a post office and sent letters around their school - they collected money, made their own stamps, had uniforms for mail deliverers, different kinds of stationary for people to write on, envelopes, baskets for collection of letters...it was a great video, but unfortunately I cannot find a working link to share it with you. If you ever get a chance to see it, be sure to check it out! Some of the ideas are advanced for preschoolers, yet I think there are some aspects of it that could be incorporated into a preschool classroom. Do you think it could be possible to build a letter writing curriculum? What types of medium would you need? Who could you look for throughout the community to help work on this idea?
Ashley had a similar idea in her blog posting this week where she wasn't sure if she should give the answer to questions that children have or have them explore for themselves. As you can see, in this instance letting children see for themselves yielded such rich ideas. How might you document a similar experience in your classroom? If you had a group that was discussing a certain idea or project, what ideas could you take from this reading to apply within your classroom? Thanks!