Helping Them to Put Ideas Into Action

A frequent topic on discussion boards is for someone to post a picture of an interesting loose part or material they’ve found and say, “What should I do with this?” There are always some people who respond with craft ideas - that the adult should take the wood circle or rock or cork and paint letters, numbers, faces, or attach objects together in a way that the adult is using the materials to create a toy for the child. Then there are always others who respond that that the adult shouldn’t do anything and “Just put it out and see what the children do.”

Intentional teaching and scaffolding creativity are somewhere between those two points.

Wooden circles with letters written on them aren’t as open ended as plain wooden circles. Writing a letter, or number, or design on a piece of wood or a rock changes that object into something more specific. Objects painted with faces and costumes are dolls, just like any factory made doll that could be ordered from a catalog. There’s still plenty of ways that these materials can be used creatively,  constructively, and interestingly, in classrooms - but as soon as the adult permanently makes the material into something else, some of the open ended possibilities disappear.

 At the other end of discussion, “just put it out” doesn’t give children the tools they need to do “something” with the material. Children - and adults - view objects in context, and form ideas or action not based on the object alone, but on the other objects and materials in the environment. Even the classic open ended activity of using a stick to make designs in the dirt or sand requires both a stick and dirt or sand. Banging a spoon on a pot requires a spoon and a pot. Give a baby just a spoon, or just a pot, without the other object, and their play will be very different. If we want to spark and provoke innovative and creative play, when we choose materials and objects to share with children, we need to consider “What could they do with this” and structure the environment in ways that allow children to figure out ways to use the materials together, and to have the tools that they need to accomplish their ideas.

We humans respond to objects by their context. If you’re served a bowl of liquid with spoon, you’d probably assume it’s soup. If that same liquid was served in a glass, you’d assume it’s a beverage. If that same liquid were poured in a tray with a brush, next to a piece of paper, you might think of painting with it. If it were in a pitcher, you might think of pouring it. The same process of examining contextual cues is what guides children’s planning and decision process. If I see a container with a spout, I think of pouring. If I see a ramp, I think of rolling. If I see a tube, I think of what could go inside. More important, is what I don’t see, because if the materials I need aren’t in my environment, I can’t put my ideas into action. We’ve all seen children struggling to gather pebbles or shells when they don’t have pockets, and as adults we’ve usually stepped in to find some container. The goal shouldn’t only be for children to figure out what to do on their own. The goal should be for us to be partners with them in their discovery. Our job is to listen, observe, and when needed and welcomed, to help. 

When Talking Gets in the Way

It’s sometimes hard to know when to talk to a child who is deeply engaged in an activity, and it’s hard to know what to say. We’ve been trained as teachers to ask questions, comment, narrate, and reflect. There are times when the right question at the right time can extend a child’s thinking and provide the spark for the next phase of their activity.

There are other times when talking just gets in the way of what they’re doing.

Even as we say that “children learn through play” and that we value “process over product” so much of teacher speech interrupts the child’s process and trying to lead the child to a tangible product. Often when a teacher says, “Tell me about what you’re doing” or “What’s your plan?”, it’s less about meeting the child where they are in the moment, and more about the teacher wanting information for themselves. Or just wanting to connect with the child who is at play, which is a wonderful goal, but requiring children who are immersed in process to answer adult questions isn’t always the best way to connect.

  

I watched while one of the three-year-olds explored wood pieces and nuts and bolts. The wood pieces had holes drilled in them, with the intention that children would discover how to fit a bolt inside, and how to connect two or more pieces with a single bolt. She worked lining up the pieces, examining the shapes they were making. She put two pieces over each other, the holes lining up almost exactly.

“I wonder what would fit inside those holes?” I asked.

She completely ignored me, and I felt a sense of discontent, that I had encroached on her process. The bolts were right there – she had been using them a moment before. If she wanted to put a bolt in the hole, she would have. She didn’t need me to tell her how to do it. Prompting her to “fit something” inside the holes was about me and my need to “teach” – not about her need to explore the materials through her own process.

Later, she put in a bolt, but didn’t push it down to connect the pieces. This time, I stayed silent, and allowed her to experience the process her way, without my interruptions.

 She added more pieces, some with bolts, some without. I wondered if she had a plan, or was just seeing how the pieces worked together as she went along. But I didn’t say anything. Just because the teacher is wondering, doesn’t mean it’s useful to the child to be asked. My wondering about her plan should not take over her process. 

Eventually, after putting together many pieces, moving them around, and taking some apart, she announced, “It’s a clock!” and showed me how two of the wooden pieces moved like hands. She added small metal pieces and said they were the numbers. After observing her entire process, I don’t think she had a “plan” to build a clock, or to build anything. For young children, the representational “product” often comes at the end of the process. After completing the process of building, or drawing, or painting, the child decides what their creation looks like, and labels it. The true learning takes place in the process, and through the play of getting there. Sometimes there are questions or comments adults have that can help them in their process, but often, we just need to get out of the way.

The Power of Provocation

Early childhood education can sometimes get caught between two extremes. On one side there are teachers armed with lists of standards and objectives, tailoring every experience to instruct children in a specific skill. On the other side there are teachers who say they just sit back and watch while the children learn all they need to without adult interference.

The reality of learning is someplace in between. Children learn through meaningful experiences and interactions that allow them to construct their own knowledge and build understandings about their environments through play. But adults are the ones who control that environment. Whatever materials are there for children to play with are there because an adult provided them.

“Just put out the materials and let the children decide what to do with them.” Statements like this reflect the wonderful power of child-directed play and exploration, but they also ignore the adult’s role. What does “just put out the materials” mean? Are they on a table or on the floor? In a basket, on a tray, or in a pile? What are the materials, and how did they get into the classroom? What is the teacher doing or saying while the child explores? While trying to value and embrace child-led learning, teachers sometimes sell themselves short, and forget that every aspect of the classroom involves some decision making by the adult. The key to creating environments where children can direct their own learning is for the adults to make these decisions in an intentional way.

Objects can have social meaning and visible physical properties that impact how we think of them. We approach objects based on our previous experiences and knowledge. Containers can be filled and emptied. Rounded objects roll. Shaking and banging create sounds. Colors change their appearance in shadows and light. Children aren’t blank slates. Every interaction they have is built on the history of all the interactions that came before, as they experiment, explore, and build understandings of their world through play.

 

This is where adults can come in. Not by telling children what they should do with the materials, but provoking the spark of what they could do with them. By making intentional choices of what materials to have in a classroom, and how to present them to children, teachers can provoke children to think “What can I do with this?”  We can plan classroom environments and present materials that spark children’s creativity, initiative, and innovation, not by giving direction, but by presenting provocation. Intentional teaching is partnership with children. It’s collaboration and communication. Intentional teaching is the adult saying. “I see your wonderful idea. Let’s travel there together.”

Recipes and Experiments in Intentional Teaching

Over the past few weeks I’ve been baking a lot of cookies. I’ve been adjusting recipes, trying to figure out how little changes in the ingredients can change the texture or taste? How much brown sugar or white sugar? What can I use instead of flour to make the recipe gluten free? Does it make a difference whether I use baking soda or baking powder?

None of this was random experimentation. Knowing what ingredients can be substituted, how a recipe can be “tweaked” stems from an underlying understanding of how to bake. Using brown sugar instead of white sugar is one thing, using salt instead of sugar would be something else entirely. I know that I can’t simply leave out the flour, or the eggs, I have to replace them with something else that has similar properties. Baking isn’t just a random combination of trial and error, it’s a science that’s based on knowing what and how different materials interact when combined and heated.

A few weeks ago I wrote about play and learning – that children learn through play, but just because they’re playing, doesn’t automatically mean that they’re learning. Simply having an experience doesn’t mean that learning, development, or growth will automatically follow. 

 It’s the content of that play experience – the materials that children use, the investigations they pursue, the interactions and conversations they have – that lead to learning. That’s where teachers come in. With our knowledge and experience about how learning happens through play, we can play alongside the children, interacting with them and scaffolding their explorations. We can provide materials and present them in ways that encourage children to think “What can I do with this?” Yes, there are some times when adult interaction interferes with children’s activity or navigates it away from the child’s agenda to the adult’s. But finding that perfect point where we can both follow the child’s lead and use our own experience and expertise to co-construct with the child is the core of intentional teaching. We aren't planning what the children should do. We're planning in consideration of all the possibilities of what the children could do, and based on our knowledge of these children and of development, what they likely would do.

Teaching isn’t all that different than baking. Following a curriculum guide word for word, just like following a recipe word for word, interferes with creativity and limits innovation. But at the same time, curriculum, just like a recipe, has some scientific basic for what works and how it works. If you put in a cup of white sugar instead of brown sugar, the consistency might change a little, but you’d still have a cookie. If you put in a cup of salt instead of sugar, your cookies would taste unrecognizable. If you left out the dry ingredients all together, you’d have a puddle that wouldn’t bake into anything. Teaching follows the same principles – just like random materials from our kitchen shelves wouldn’t necessarily bake into a cookie, children’s random activities don’t necessarily lead to learning. Curriculum objectives and standards and teachers’ experiences and professional knowledge are all pieces that contribute to the interactions of intentional teaching.  Adults need to be careful not to overwhelm children with our own agendas, but we also need to be confident in our abilities and experience to be true teachers in partnership with children. That’s where the magic of learning happens - when we strike that balance between our sharing our knowledge and helping the children to build theirs.

Learning Through Play - But All Play Isn't Learning

“Children learn through play.”

“Play is children’s work.”

 When we say “children learn through play”, we’re recognizing and acknowledging the important process that play, as a self-directed, intrinsically motivated activity has for providing opportunities for learning and development. When we say, “play is children’s work”, we’re demonstrating value for play as an essential aspect of children’s learning, and validating its role as a centerpiece in early childhood programs.

But even though children learn through play, is all play learning?

When I mentored student teachers, their lesson plan assignments always ended with a section for them to self-evaluate the activity they had planned. Often, the student teacher would simply write, “The children had fun.” I see and hear this same evaluation in online forums, in product reviews of classroom materials, and in discussions with teachers of all levels of experience. “The kids loved it!” “They had so much fun!” “They were really interested in what they were doing!”

Is fun – or interest – or enjoyment – the same thing as learning?

Play can have many purposes – some of them involve the sheer enjoyment of the activity, or the total engagement in the moment – the “flow” as referred to in psychology. Finding joy, fun, and flow in what we do are essential to who we are as human beings, and we want to provide those opportunities for children. But just because an activity was fun, doesn’t mean that learning happened.

“Learning”, by definition involves change. It involves development and growth. Children learn through play when those play experiences lead them to do something new, or think about things in a new way. It isn’t enough for children to “just play” - teachers need to provide classroom environments, materials, and interactions that encourage children to share ideas, negotiate, experiment, hypothesize, and evaluate. Teachers need to encourage children to say “What can I do with this?” and provide them scaffolding to extend their thinking and encourage them not only to play, but reflect on what they are doing. Teachers need to ask open ended questions, provide feedback, and help children think about their own thinking. 

Play is the starting point, not the finish line. Play can - and should - be learning, but there are many steps along the way. And many things that teachers can – and should – do to help children get there.

It's More Than Just Fun

The kids love it!

They have so much fun with this!

In conversations with teachers and reading online blogs and comments, these phrases come up over and over again, as the reason for planning a classroom activity, or the evaluation of how it went? “Oh, you tried that art activity on Pinterest, how did it go?” “The kids loved it – it was so much fun!”

Of course it was fun, they’re kids. They’re naturally wired to have fun. If we give them an activity and they don’t have fun, that’s what we need to worry about. The bigger issue of planning and evaluating classroom activities shouldn’t be whether they’re “fun” or whether the kids “love it”. It should be how we observe the learning and development taking place. We shouldn’t be planning for “fun”, we should be planning to meet developmental objectives and to engage the children’s interests.

“I don’t have to plan. I just put the materials out and see what they do with them.”

Every time we enter a classroom, choose a material, place it in a certain way on a table, floor, or shelf, we’re planning. Teachers in play-based, discovery learning environments sometimes shy away from this, out of fear of imposing their own ideas on the children’s play. But the social interaction that happens between any group of people, especially adults and children involves planning. Which materials did you choose to put on your classroom shelves? Are they stored in baskets, boxes, or something else? How many are there of each? When you saw that art activity on Pinterest, or in a neighboring classroom, it sparked an idea for you that was probably more than just “this is fun”. What did you think/hope/wonder that your kids would do with these same materials?

Planning a play based curriculum can sometimes feel overwhelming, as we balance what it means to “teach” and what it means for children to explore and discover. It’s true that in a play-based program, we aren’t teaching children to do specific tasks according to our directions. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t teaching. Our jobs as teachers are to observe where the children’s play is going and facilitate it, scaffold interactions between children and the materials and between children and each other, and to provide the opportunities for learning to take place.

Intentional teaching involves teachers having planning and purpose in the environment, activities, and interactions that we create, nurture, and encourage. When we choose activities, we need to ask ourselves, “What will the children do with this? That doesn’t mean we’re requiring or expecting them to do one specific thing, but we’re considering all the possibilities of what might happen. And how that ties back to learning and development?  We need to ask ourselves what experiences am I giving children that will spark problem solving? Collaboration? Innovation? Creativity?

And yes, it will still be fun, and the kids will love it. But it will be much more than that too.

“Teachers, Step Away From Your Tables”

I’m a big fan of the Food Network show Chopped. In this show, chefs compete to create unique dishes using strange combinations of assigned foods, in a matter of minutes. After rushing around the kitchen to find additional ingredients and necessary utensils, preparing the food, and finally, plating it to serve attractively, the voice of the host rings out: “Chefs, step away from your stations.” The chefs step back, and their creations are frozen in time – whatever they were able to create in 20 minutes will face the judges.

This routine flows through my head in the morning as I rush to set up my classroom. Some of the tasks are mundane: set out seating mats for circle time, fetch snack from the kitchen, check that diapers are stocked and chairs pulled up to the tables. But then there’s the artistry – choosing materials and setting them out just so, attractive and engaging. My preschoolers can be as discerning about a tray of paint as a celebrity chef is judging an elaborate dessert. Racing against the clock, will I have enough time to set things out the way I want the children to see them when they enter the room?

Sometimes I wonder whether it’s worth the trouble. After all, children come ready to play, no matter which paintbrushes I chose or how the blocks are stacked against the wall. In a way, the materials, the arrangement, the environment doesn’t matter all that much. But in many other ways, it does. Some arrangements of materials draw children in, others send a message to go somewhere else. Some spark ideas and imagination. Some provide space to do individual work, others create tension and conflict between children. I’ve watched a child break down in tears because she couldn’t find a purple marker in the crowded basket, I’ve seen children focused more on grabbing the lone wheeled Lego from their neighbor than on building anything themselves. The chef who spills sauce sloppily over the side of the dish has made an unattractive mess. The preschool teacher who does the same with paint has created an invitation for the children to make an even bigger mess.

So I rush, glancing furtively at the clock. I have my bag of organizational tricks so I can try to easily pull out the paint, the blocks, the trays that I need. I have a back-up plan for the morning that happens all too often, when with 5 minutes left on the clock, the watercolor cakes are crumbled and the sensory table scoops are missing. Because the children will play, and my job is to do the best I can. Not the best there is, day after day, but the best I can for the children at that moment. The clock is ticking and I hear the children’s voices in the hall. It’s time to step away from my station and let the play begin. 

Teaching Take Apart

Recently on a teacher discussion board I follow, some teachers were discussing the new trend of “take apart” or “tinkering” centers and how overwhelmed they felt trying to manage those activities in their classrooms. “Take apart” isn’t actually a new trend, but the current push toward emphasizing STEM (or STEAM or STREAM) activities has pushed the old tools and woodworking activities into the spotlight. The teachers on this board felt pushed to provide science and technology activities, but were struggling with how to do it in a child-directed play based way that ensured children’s safety. They were concerned about physical safety – children using tools like screwdrivers, wrenches, and wirecutters safely. But also about emotional safety – one of the common concerns mentioned was how easily the children got frustrated trying to take out screws or untangle wires. Several teachers said the activity ended with children hitting and banging the materials against the table, or smacking them with the screwdriver.

One of the things we sometimes forget in play-based curriculum, is that teachers are there to teach. We can follow children’s lead, and build curriculum around their ideas, but in our role as experienced adults, we can also provide the scaffolding and guidance they need to develop skills and to learn the steps needed to accomplish tasks independently. “Take apart” (or using tools) doesn’t involve a natural process like gravity or flotation that can be discovered through observation or trial and error. It involves a complex set of visual motor skills and use of human designed tools. Some children can figure some of these skills out independently, but some need scaffolding – adult guidance to help them complete the task successfully with as much independence as possible.

Before embarking on a take-apart project in my four-year-old room, I wanted to give the children an opportunity to explore and practice with the tools they would be using. I bought several different sizes of Phillips and flat-head screwdrivers, and a variety of large screws with wide heads. I put these out on a table with large pieces of Styrofoam, and inserted several of the screws into the Styrofoam. I showed the children the screwdrivers, and asked them if they could figure out how to screw and unscrew the screws.

Some of them had worked with screwdrivers before. Some hadn’t. One of the children noticed the difference between the flat head and Phillips head screws. I suggested they try both types of screwdrivers, and see if the same screwdriver worked on both screws. They figured out right away that they didn’t, but I wonder if they would have noticed this important difference if I hadn’t encouraged them to experiment.

 After a few days of working with screws and Styrofoam, with a teacher participating alongside them, it was time to move on to “take apart.” My co-teacher brought in an old cassette player, and we loosened the outside screws ahead of time, so the children would be able to unscrew them on their own. My co-teacher worked alongside them, to help hold the cassette player, or help turn a screw that they were having trouble with, and to simply manage the area, helping them to negotiate turns and to pass the materials around the table.

When they finally opened the case, figuring out what was inside wasn’t nearly as interesting to them as taking it all out.

The most interesting discovery about the contents was that the speaker was magnetic, and each child tested this by sticking their screwdriver to it. What a speaker is, and why it’s magnetic, wasn’t even a question – they were focused on the process of sticking metal pieces to the magnet

After everything was taken out, I asked if they thought they could put it back together. At that point, several of the take apart crew had left, because when you’re four, taking things apart is usually more interesting than putting it back together. But two of the children stayed with the project, and with my help, figured out how to close the cassette player case and fit the screws back in.

Did they figure this all out independently through play? No. Did they follow step by step directions and learn how cassette players work? No. But someplace in between completely child driven and completely adult led activity, they explored, they observed, they predicted, and they problem solved. Which is what science is all about – with our help.

Just One Small Planning Decision

I write a lot about intentional teaching, and the importance of setting up activities in a planned and thoughtful way, but there are always those “why didn’t I think of that before” moments.
One of the manipulatives I have in my classroom are “hex boards”. I don’t know what this toy is actually called, but it’s a set of boards that have rows of raised circles along with multi-colored hexagon shaped tiles that fit on top. I assume they were designed for patterning activities. Sometimes the older preschoolers use the boards this way, lining up rows of different colors, or choosing to alternate tiles in a pattern. The younger children usually just fill up the boards in a random way, with the goal being more about filling it up than about selecting colors. Sometimes they try to choose specific colors, but get frustrated digging through all the tiles trying to find just the blue or just the white ones.

Usually I set up the boards on a table with individual containers of tiles, so each child has their own materials. But one of the problems is setting up this activity so each child has enough tiles to fill their board. The boards take up a lot of space, and so do the containers. Now that we’ve reached the point in the year where they children are more comfortable sharing materials, I thought I’d try putting the tiles in a container in the middle of the table.

At first I was going to put them in a shallow basket, but then I noticed a divided container that I usually use for playdough toys or art materials. Seeing the five sections, I wondered what would happen if I sorted the tiles by color.

Of course, their play was immediately more intentional. Some of the children always showed preference for certain colors, but the tasks of simultaneously sorting and arranging were too much. Now that the tiles were neatly arranged into color groups, most of the children could concentrate on choosing the colors they wanted.

At first they each chose a single color and created relatively monochromatic designs.

But as they worked longer, they began to combine different colors. No one made patterns or representational designs, but there was a clear intention in the children’s work, as they chose materials, instead of simply picking up whatever was in reach and randomly putting it down. The arrangement and presentation of the materials matter. One small decision by a teacher to set up the materials in a slightly different way changed how the children were able to use the materials.

Just like many of us would rather choose which pen to write with than randomly reach into a drawer and take the first one we find, children also want – and need – the opportunity to choose, plan, and make decisions about their own work.