bbeeggiinnnniinnggsswwoorrkksshhooppccie.com/library_bw/8214400.pdf · ann delights in young...

Child Care Information Exchange 3/02 — 37

WWW.CHILDCAREEXCHANGE.COMProjects &

Themes Part 2

Supporting Young Children as Activists: Anti-bias Project Work by Ann Pelo

A Study of Hands: Chicago Commons Explores Reggio Emiliaby Karen Haigh, Diane Rodriguez, and Gigi Schroeder

A Personal Experience With Portfolio Books by Lisa Meinen

Event-Based Play: Symbolizing Children’s Thinkingby Susan Whitaker

Training Suggestions Within Articles by Kay Albrecht

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Reprinted with permission — Child Care Information ExchangePO Box 3249, Redmond, WA 98073 • (800) 221-2864 • www.ChildCareExchange.com


Supporting Young Children As Activists:Anti-bias Project Work

Many of us have embraced in-depth project work with youngchildren as a way to grow curriculum that is responsive tochildren’s pursuits. We pay careful attention to children’squestions and passions, to their developmental themes, andtheir cultural contexts. And, in response to what we observeabout children’s thinking and experiences, we grow emergent,in-depth projects, perhaps inviting children to study friend-ship, or the life cycle of salmon, or the ways in which familiescelebrate birthdays.

We may balk, though, when children present us withopportunities to take up issues like homelessness, racism,hunger, and environmental concerns. These issues areweighty; we carry strong beliefs and commitments aroundthese sorts of issues, and we know that the children’s familiesdo, too. We’re anxious about possible conflicts with families ifour perspectives on an issue differ. We worry that our adultagendas will take over a project, or that we’re burdeningchildren with adult issues and adult responsibilities. We careabout keeping our curriculum developmentally appropriate,and worry that anti-bias activism isn’t a developmental fit foryoung children. All in all, it often seems easiest to avoid suchloaded subjects with children, or to respond to children’squeries about issues of injustice with quick, conclusivestatements that put a halt to further exploration ofchallenging issues.

But when we fail to honor children’s passion about fairnesswith the same thoughtfulness and intention that we bring totheir other passions and pursuits, we fail the children. It isessential that we attend to the issues of unfairness that thechildren in our care experience and witness. When a childalerts us that she’s discovered something unfair, it is ourresponsibility to listen attentively to her, inviting her to shareher discovery with other children, encouraging the children to

think critically about the issue, and supporting their desire totake action. When we do this, we support children’s identitydevelopment and strengthen essential dispositions in youngchildren.

Anti-bias activism projects provide young children with away of challenging the biases they see in their own lives andin the lives of others. This is essential for children at risk forinternalizing cultural biases that tell them that their place isout of sight and out of the way of people with power andprivilege. Anti-bias activism acknowledges the injustice theysee and experience and encourages them to join with others toconfront injustice. Anti-bias activism projects are equallyessential for privileged, dominant-culture children; these projects invite children to recognize unfairness and to act,using their privilege to bring about justice.

Activism projects strengthen key dispositions in young children. As they work to counter unfairness, children areencouraged to pay attention to their feelings and experiencesand to the feelings and experiences of other people; toembrace and make room for differences; to speak out aboutunfairness; and to join with others in collaborative efforts to correct injustice. When we promote action rather thanindifference or resignation as a response to injustice, we cultivate children’s sense of themselves as change-makers.

by Ann Pelo

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Ann delights in young children. She hastaught three-, four-, and five-year-oldchildren at Hilltop Children’s Center inSeattle for nine years. Ann is particularlyinterested in anti-bias and peace educationand in the philosophy of the schools ofReggio Emilia, Italy. She is the co-author,with Fran Davidson, of That’s Not Fair:

A Teacher’s Guide to Activism with Young Children.


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Activism projects grow out of children’s astute observation ofsimilarities and differences and of the inequities inherent insome of the differences they observe. Children naturallynotice and ask about the differences in decor in the boys’ andgirls’ bathrooms, the plastic bandage that matches some chil-dren’s skin colors but not others’, the homeless woman theysee in the neighborhood park, the man in the wheelchair theysee having difficulty crossing the street. And they frame theirobservations with assessments about the fairness and unfair-ness of what they’ve noticed. The bandage matches your skinbut not my skin; that difference is not fair to me. I live in acozy home, you live on the cold, wet street; that difference isnot fair to you.

All of us who work with young children can think of timesthat children have called our attention to unfairness. I experi-enced this most dramatically several years ago. A child in myclass arrived at school breathless in her eagerness to alert usto an injustice she’d witnessed; she gathered the childrenaround her, and declared, “My mom and me saw a homelessperson, a boy, and he had no food and no house. That’s not

fair! We gotta help all the people who don’t have food andhouses!”

Children also present us with activism issues to explore asthey play. During a pretend game one morning in my class-room, several children played about pollution, teaching thekitties and puppies in the game that pollution is bad to eat.Their game was full of grave warnings about the dangers ofpollution and the need to clean it up.

Neighborhood events can give rise to activism projects. Abeloved tree may be targeted to be cut down, leading toletter-writing and a petition, or a street repair project maynecessitate a new sidewalk, leading to a campaign to makethe sidewalk accessible for people in wheelchairs.

As with other in-depth projects,children’s passions, questions, andconcerns arrive in our classroomsthrough many doors. Once they’vearrived, it is our responsibility torespond — after taking a few deepbreaths and resisting the urge to leapin with trumpets blaring or to run fastin the opposite direction!

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As an activism project unfolds, wemust pay close attention to children’splay and conversations, watching andlistening for clues about what thechildren are thinking and feelingabout the issues at the heart of theproject. When we observe and listen tochildren, we learn about the children’sunderstandings and misunderstand-ings, about what’s important to thechildren, and what questions they’re

trying to answer. Our awareness of the children’s thinkingand feeling guides our planning.

During a project about building a wheelchair ramp at ourschool, I noticed the children talking a lot about speed bumpsand about how wonderfully fast wheelchairs could speeddown a ramp. Their conversations let me know that thechildren needed more experience with real wheelchairs andmore interaction with people who use wheelchairs to help

PHOTOGRAPHS BY BONNIE NEUGEBAUER


them understand how ramps work best. And in a projectabout homelessness, I noticed the children building homelessshelters and playing about living in them; I realized that thechildren were working out their feelings about being home-less, and decided to slow the project down and create moreopportunities for children to express their fears, sadness, andconcern.

Planning for an activism project happens day by day, step bystep, rather than all at once at the beginning of a project. Theplanning is grounded in our daily observations of and conver-sations with children. Our responsiveness to the children’sthinking and feeling insures that children’s discoveries,questions, and developmental issues shape a project, andkeeps the project developmentally appropriate.

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Often, children respond to an injustice with an outpouring ofemotion and a call to action: “This book only has boy basket-ball players in it! It’s mean to leave out girls! It’s not fair! Wegotta just throw this book away!” It’s important first to make

plenty of room for children to voice their feelings, and then toinvite them to think critically about an issue before leapinginto action. This helps children to move beyond a surfaceunderstanding of an issue and think about it more deeply. Wecan ask children to consider why a problem exists, who isinvolved in the problem, what other people feel and thinkabout the issue, and how the children’s actions might impact

other people. As the children deepentheir understanding and become morearticulate about an issue, we gathermore information about children’s realconcerns and passions, so that the actionthat we take together grows out ofthoughtfulness and understanding.

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We serve as historians and archivists as aproject unfolds, collecting notes, photos,drawings, and transcriptions that tell thestory of an activism project. We can usebulletin boards as collection centers forphotos, notes, and drawings, or createhomemade books for documentationthat represents and reflects the project as it unfolds.

When children in my class were explor-ing the possibility of building a wheel-chair ramp at our school, I used abulletin board in our classroom to post photos of children trying out a

wheelchair, visiting a neighbor who used a wheelchair, andbuilding with ramp-shaped blocks; drawings of ramps thatchildren had made; notes from the children’s meetings aboutramps and construction; and a time-line of the project towhich I added notes about significant events as the projectunfolded. Children often lingered at this bulletin board,reminding each other of key moments in the project andrecreating drawings and block structures that were picturedon the bulletin board. Families checked the board daily tokeep up-to-date on the project.

Books, bulletin boards, and other displays provide a visualhistory for children, reminding them about how and why anactivism project began, recording their early thinking andexploration, and inviting them to revisit and refine it. Ourdocumentation is important for families, too. Families


appreciate descriptive stories that assure them that theactivism work grows from children’s play and supportschildren’s learning and growth. And stories, photos, anddetailed notes invite families to join teachers in thinkingabout children’s passions and concerns.

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Activism projects require that we collaborate with families.With activism projects children take on hot topics. Their fami-lies hold values and beliefs about those issues that they com-municate to their children, and the children bring thosevalues and beliefs to their work on activism projects. Parents’values play a role in how activism projects grow, whether weacknowledge that role or ignore it. When we acknowledgeparents’ values, we can do our best work. When we intention-ally include parents, seek out their perspectives, and aim formutual understanding and collaboration, differences can beacknowledged openly and support can be frankly offered andreceived. Children get to draw on their parents’ ideas andfeelings to deepen their learning about an issue. We haveopportunities to extend our thinking and broaden our per-spectives about an issue. And we can strengthen our relation-ships with parents, discover new resources that parents offer,

and receive help and support from parents. In this way, webuild bridges for children between their experiences at homeand at school, open doors for family involvement, and deepenour understanding of the beliefs and values of children’sfamilies.

Some strategies for communicating with families and invitingtheir input include: maintaining up-to-date displays that tellthe story of a project as it grows; inviting families to add todocumentation displays with notes from conversationsthey’ve had at home about the project and experiencesthey’ve had that relate to the project; sending copies of project documentation home for families; providing anotepad in which families can write comments and concerns;letting parents know good times to call you during the day;and inviting families to meet with you individually or alltogether to share their hopes and reflections about an activism project.

We cannot afford to sidestep the responsibility for facilitatingactivism projects with young children that honor children’sconcern for fairness. Children are ready to be creative andcollaborative activists. It is our responsibility to becomeconfident risk-takers in these collaborations with the childrenin our care.


How to Use Beginnings Wo rkshop to Train Teachers by Kay Albrecht

Worth the Debate: Pelo raises many important issues about supporting children’s activism.There may be some debate about whether teachers feel able toincorporate activist curriculum into their classroom. Use a debate format to explore the appropriateness of supporting young children as activists. Divide teachersinto debate teams — one for the idea, and one against the idea. Make sure both sides do their homework and prepare for the debate. Explore how teachers feelabout the debate as a springboard to what to do next.

Bringing Activism into the Classroom: Pelo describes the role of teachers in bringing activism into the classroom (see p.38). Use these steps to simulatehow teachers might respond to issues that children identify. Work through the steps of listening, support sharing, and action on a few topics that your childrenhave brought up.

Activism is Personal: Encourage teachers to share their observations or experiences with similarities, differences, and inequities. Personalizing the issues helpsteachers consider ways to share their experiences when children raise similar issues.

How? — Good Question!: This author gives teachers four guidelines for supporting young children as activists. Work with teachers to identify how toaddress these guidelines in the classroom.

Let Children Lead You: Observe children’s play for examples of experiences that relate to similarities, differences, and inequities. Share observations at a staffmeeting and discuss how to proceed with the topics of interest to children.



A Study of Hands:Chicago Commons Explores Reggio Emilia

by Karen Haigh, Diane Rodriguez, and Gigi Schroeder

Chicago Commons is a 107-year-old non-profit, social serviceagency that chooses to work with low-income, inner city com-munities of Chicago. Its Child Development Program offerscare and education for just less than 1,000 children frominfancy through school-age at six different locations. Types ofprograms include Early Head Start, Head Start, SubsidizedChild Care, State Pre-kindergarten, and a Family Child CareNetwork.

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Exploring Reggio for Chicago Commons was about new pos-sibilities. It was about offering staff opportunities to becomemore reflective thinkers and facilitators who could supportchildren in becoming problem solvers, decision makers, nego-tiators, collaborators, and good communicators. Most of ourchildren come from communities lacking in resources andlacking in possibilities. The Reggio approach suggests newpossibilities — possibilities of developing skills, knowledge,and attitudes in children that could help them become morecompetent adults and life-long learners.

A secondary rationale for exploring Reggio has evolved overtime — this approach demonstrates a powerfully strong and

unconditional respect for children and their ideas. In addition,exploring the Reggio approach invites and encourages adults,including teaching staff, directors, family workers, and evenparents to be thinkers, creators, communicators, and collabo-rators as they become more thoughtful and reflective.

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Over the past three years, Commons has developed a flexibleframework for approaching the inquiry process with childrenin the form of what we call studies. We chose to use the termstudy because it tends to promote the idea of wondering andexploring as opposed to following a grand theme driven onlyby the adult’s agenda. We spent time discussing an older arti-cle from Journal of Education called “Building from Children’sStrengths” by Patricia Carini (1986). It discusses that theteacher’s role as a facilitator is to imagine future/possibleexperiences or activities while trying to stay with the spirit ofthe child’s interests, feelings, and areas of pursuit.

Within this process teachers spend a great deal of timeobserving, listening, and documenting children’s ideas, feel-ings, and experiences. Teachers then meet weekly with a teamfrom the site consisting of a site director, a family worker, and

Diane Rodriguezis a familyworker atChicagoCommons NewCity. She wasonce enrolled asa child, served

as a parent volunteer, and is now astaff member. Her experiences atChicago Commons have provided herwith insight to the many dynamics ofthe child development programs.

Gigi Schroederis the studiocoordinator forChicago Com-mons. She hasbeen involvedwithin the fieldof art education

for the past ten years. She uses herpast experiences in visual artseducation to support teachers,children, and parents in thelearning process.

Karen Haigh has been thechild development director atChicago Commons for over 13years, operating six childdevelopment centers withininner-city neighborhoods ofChicago. The program has 170staff members who provide

care and education to almost 1,000 children.Since 1993, under the direction of Karen Haigh,the Chicago Commons Child Development programhas become especially involved in and committedto exploring and interpreting the Reggio EmiliaApproach to early childhood education.


either a studio or education coordinator. At these weekly teammeetings, the group views the documentation of children’sthoughts, feelings, and experiences in order to interpretinterests and motivations.

The dynamics of the different roles within each team providesfor many perspectives. Some ideas stem from those who workdirectly with children and others who make connections toparents and the community as a whole. Every team memberhas unique qualities that come forth in reflection and dialogueand has his/her own interpretive abilities. Plans are made tosupport, challenge, and extend children’s interests andexperiences.

We began a new endeavor that involved choosing some topicsto study agency-wide. Some of the reasons we began to lookinto research/study topics are: 1. To pursue the idea of teachers as researchers.2. To provide a structure and direction for staff and parents.

This structure of study topics offers a framework to hangonto and provides a sense of direction.

3. Using study topics offers teams the opportunity and chal-lenge to study something that is relevant to children, staff,and parents.

4. Exploring these study topics together enables us to shareour action or practical research with others in the field ofeducation.

Teams are encouraged to individually explore, study, andresearch additional topics that may emerge with a particulargroup in a classroom or center. The following is a list of studytopics for the last year:

■ Materials/identity and community

■ How to ask children questions and have a conversationwith them

■ The beginning and end of the day for children

■ Where should/can children play in the classroom

■ Holidays

■ Posing a problem/how children make decisions

■ How children see roles differently

■ Exchanges with other communities

■ Letters

■ Numbers

■ Nature

■ How things work

■ Communication

■ Social phenomenon

■ Chicago/neighborhoods

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In September our Pre-Kindergarten classroom at ChicagoCommons New City began exploring drawing materials. Theteachers introduced many items that were new to the childrensuch as charcoal and Conti pencils, china markers, and oilpastels. By paying close attention to the dialogue and inter-changes that children expressed while using each drawingmaterial, the teachers noticed that children displayed a greatinterest in their hands. The children began tracing or drawingtheir hands and using the materials directly on them. Onechild used charcoal to color his whole hand and then used itas the drawing material rather than the pencil. From theseobservations by the teachers, we began to discuss ways inwhich to pursue and extend the children’s interests duringour team meeting. Ideas were discussed that incorporated thestudy of identity and how the materials could enhance theidentity of the child.

The classroom teachers wanted to provide children withmany opportunities to study and explore hands in a variety of


Commons slowly and gradually has been exploring someof the elements of the Reggio Emilia Approach since 1993.They are as follows:

■ An image of the child as capable, ready to learn, andwanting to socialize;

■ An environment that provokes and supports a sense ofwonder, experimentation, thinking, socialization, andconnection with nature and culture;

■ Use of documentation to see, reflect, and revisit ideas,feelings, experiences, and the learning process ofchildren and adults;

■ Use of the visual arts as a means to express andrepresent experiences and understanding;

■ Use of observation and listening in order to promoteemergent curriculum and in-depth studies based on the interests and motivations of children, as well asteachers;

■ Use of collaboration among children and adults;

■ Parent partnerships where teachers and parents worktogether and share different perspectives; and

■ Organizational structure and professional developmentthat allows for vision, dialogue, flexible planning, experiences, revisiting, and reflecting.

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situations. Theyused different con-texts, techniques,and tools to studythe children’shands. In outdoorexperiences, as wellas indoors, theyprojected theirhands to makethem larger and encountered theirhands in multiplesituations. The

teachers also paid atten-tion to those children whofound drawing theirhands challenging. Theteachers found that point-ing out the lines andshapes within children’shands and using the lighttables to trace photos oftheir hands gave childrennew possibilities to study-ing and adding detail.The teachers asked thechildren what their favorite things were to dowith their hands and took photographs of themdemonstrating this activity:

Cara (teacher): What is your favorite thing to dowith your hands?

Joel: To make a pumpkin. Make a circle.

Leonardo: To paint my hands.

The photographs were placed on a table and the children wereable to notice and recall the uniqueness of their hands. Themore the children encountered their hands in new and familiar

situations, the more they began to see the differences and simi-larities among the other students. As the team revisited draw-ings throughout the duration of the study, a progression of thechildren’s drawings became obvious. The drawings becamemore detailed and children expressed much of their identitywithin these details. They added identifying marks into theirhand drawings and revisited prior experiences connected tothose lines. The progression of the study moved into the chil-dren noticing other classmates’ hands and they began toexpress an interest in drawing a friend’s hand. During thisprocess, the child whose hands were chosen to be drawnwould critique the drawing and point out details that hisfriend may have forgotten.

The team discussed the possibili-ties of connections with parents inrelation to the study and decidedto extend the experience into a par-ent meeting. The parents wereintroduced to some of the materialsthat children were using, and theyexplored with charcoal in wayssimilar to their children. Parentswere challenged to use the charcoalto discover attributes of the materi-als as they filled a large paper withas many lines as possible. Theparents also used the material tospeak or communicate an idea asthe children often do. Parents wereasked to draw their hands, andthey compared and noticed simi-larities and differences with each

other. Some of the parentsnoticed unique lines,shapes, or the size of theirhands. They, too, discoveredidentity in their drawings.

The team also began todiscuss that this thought ofidentity was greater than the children and theirparents; it also connected toour communities. Thechildren and parents arepart of the communities that

they live in and so they are also a part of the identity of thecommunity. First, the teachers asked the children what peoplein the community used their hands for:



Monica (teacher’s aide): What do you think other people use theirhands for?

Isabel: They drive with their hands. Daddies use the keys to open thedoor.

Nelson: People use their hands to plant seeds, to buy stuff, and feedtheir children.

The teachers planned a walking field trip to visit local placesof business that children connected to. These were places thatthe children frequently visited with their parents or passed onthe way to school. In some cases they were their parents’places of employment. The children visited a bakery, arestaurant, and Goldblatt’s (a neighborhood department store). They were asked to focus on what people were using theirhands for.

After each visit, the teachers would return to the center anddialogue with the children about their experiences. Theycommunicated that the people used their hands to produceitems or in ways that were related to their professions. Somechildren created interpretations of the way people use theirhands using clay or drawing materials, and identified theuniqueness of each person they encountered.

Again, the team collaborated and invited the parents to ameeting. But this time, they explored along side their children.As the parents arrived at the meeting, the classroom teachersphotographed their hands. The roles of teaching were reversed when the children led and demonstrated for theirparents how to draw hands. They also recalled and problem-solved challenges independently by walking parents over tothe light table or using other techniques that they hadpreviously used in their classrooms. At the end of the meeting,the parents were asked to identify their children’s hands fromphotographs that were laid out on the light table. We hypothe-sized prior to the meeting that this would be a difficult taskbecause many of the hands appeared very similar. We discov-ered that the parents had a very strong connection to theidentity of their children’s hands and many could describethem detailing the size of their fingers, the amount of hairs,and lines or marks.

Through this exploration of hands and identity, we, as staff,realized that this idea goes further than a description of whatwe look like, further than our names, and our hobbies. It isabout valuing differences in people and identifying things thatwe also have in common. Our identity is what makes usunique and individual, but also connects us with a group. Inthe process of this learning experience we began to think

beyond identify-ing children bytheir appear-ances or namesand challengedourselves to findnew ways toidentify a child’sidentity. We allhave hands andeach hand is aunique repre-sentation of anindividual.

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Carini, P. (1986). Building from Children’s Strengths. Journal ofEducation, 168(3), 13-24.

Edwards, C., Gandini L., & Forman, G. (Eds.) (1998). TheHundred Languages of Children. Reggio Emilia, Italy: ReggioEmilia.

Using Beginnings Workshop toTrain Teachers by Kay Albrecht

What study topics appeal to your program?: The journey described by theseteachers began with identifying topics to explore. Do any of these study topicsinterest your teachers? If not, make your own list. Send teachers back to theirclassrooms to research children’s interests by observing and listening to children. Then, encourage teachers to pursue a topic and see what happens (see ideas for developing study topics, p. 42).

Setting the stage: These teachers used Carini’s article as a discussionspringboard. Share a copy of this article with staff and see what happens in your discussion.

When will we get this done?: At a staff meeting, brainstorm strategies forincreasing the amount of time teachers can spend observing. Choose some of the ideas you identify and try them. Record actual observation time on the classroom calendar as a strategy for assessing effectiveness. If the ones selecteddon’t work, try again.

What are children learning?: In the US, pressure continues to mount for teach-ing accountability. Analyze the hand project to identify what children learned as practice for sharing skill and process knowledge with families and others.

Families have hands, too!: Teachers found many ways to include families in the hand project. Do any of their ideas spark family participation ideas for thestudy topics you identified for your program?




A Personal Experience With Portfolio Books

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Two years ago when a group ofchildren, whom I had taught for over ayear, were moving on to preschool, Iwanted to do something to mark my timewith them. I had collected pictures ofthem playing together, doing activities andsaved some artwork; but I wasn’t surewhat to do with it all. One of my co-teach-ers showed me the way she was putting asimilar collection of materials into books forher children. With her format in mind, Icreated my own portfolio books. The booksincluded pictures, artwork, developmental assessments,anecdotal notes, and project documentations. They displayed

the work, growth, and fun the childrenexperienced at schoolwhile I was their teacher.

The first set of portfoliobooks were made and pre-sented to children as a good-bye gift, a culminationactivity. In the process, thebooks helped ease both thechildren and the parents’ tran-sition to the new preschool

teacher. The books celebrated the time we had spent togetheras a group and helped the new teacher to begin to form rela-tionships as my group became her group.

At HeartsHome, we keep the same group of children overtime, and move from classroom to classroom together (seeAlbrecht, et. al. 2000 for more information). During thisextended length of time together, you become very close toboth the children and their parents. Formalizing the processof sharing that long period of time together turned out to begood for all of us.

With my present group, I am compiling each child’s portfoliobook as they grow. Further, I am using them more as a way toconnect with parents about their child. As I meet with parentsfor their regular quarterly conferences, I show them how thebooks are progressing. I share the notes, developmental

by Lisa Meinen

Lisa Meinen is a primary teacher atHeartsHome Early Learning Center, anationally accredited early childhoodprogram in Houston, Texas. She has abachelors degree in Early Childhoodfrom Baylor University. Lisa is growingup with her third group of children and

specializes in infants and toddlers. HeartsHome is managedby Bright Horizons/Family Solutions.


assessment summaries, work samples, and project documentation that highlightsemerging and acquired skills. As important as the assessment data is to parentsand teachers, it is the pictures and artwork that are enjoyed the most by parents. I try hard to capture the child’s special nature in the photos, bringing their experi-ences to life for parents who are not often there to see things as they happen.

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Portfolio books build over time. They are a nice way to keep track ofdevelopmental progress and changes in skills, abilities, and interests.They illustrate the progress through developmental stages, graphically, ina way that is easily recognizable to parents and teachers.

An unanticipated advantage of portfolio books is that parents get moreinsight into their children’s time at school. Our parents are away fromtheir children most of the day. The portfolio books help parents betterunderstand what their child does during their time at school and howwe spend our time together — in routine, educational, and curricularactivities.

As the children get older, their books come to life. They can look back atthe books and take pride in how much they have learned and grown.They can feel proud, and they have an organized documentation abouttheir infant and toddler years. They can look at pictures, read aboutwhat was going on at the time the picture was taken, look at artworkthey did, and read about things I observed about them at school.Sometimes the school experiences are different than their homeexperiences — another exciting discovery.


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At HeartsHome, every teacher approaches portfoliosdifferently; some make books, some have expandable portfo-lios, others collect work samples only. Those who make port-folio books do them in different ways. We share ideas andformats with each other, then pick and choose what works forour current group of children. We use a variety of formats —file folders, boxes, scrapbooks, expandable portfolios, andthree-ring binders.

I use three-ring binders,and include the follow-ing in them:

Cover Page:■ Child’s name, name

of school, picture ofchild.

DevelopmentalAssessments and DevelopmentalBanners:■ Assessments of the

child every 4 - 6months.

■ Developmental banners celebrate particular developmentalmilestones or events of importance in the child’s orfamily’s life. Examples of developmental banners includephotographs of newly accomplished motor skills: sittingwithout support, rolling over, pulling to a stand orwalking. They can also be physical changes: cutting a firsttooth, birth of a sibling; or language acquisition mile-stones: saying “Mama,” “Dada,” and two word sentences:“more milk.” Even emotional milestones like “pointing toself in mirror” or “transitions easily toschool.”

Photographs:■ Of milestones, art in

process, activities and experiences, and photos that capture the child’s personality.

Work Samples:■ Coloring samples (crayons,

markers, chalk, pencil, etc.);painting samples (brush,

finger, watercolor, bodypainting,etc.); collagesamples(glue art,sticker art, sensory artexperiences,etc). Some-times thesamples arepieces oflarger projects that share the child’s contribu-tion, along with my notes about the experience and the child’s reaction or response.

Project Documentation:■ Pieces of projects, pictures of the children

working on projects, and notes about wherethe project idea came from, also how theproject was done, and how the childrenaccomplished it.

Activities:■ Birthday parties and special events, interactions between

children indoor and outdoors, and group times.

Goodbye Page:■ A note to the child, and a group picture (or a photograph

of the teacherwith the child).



How to Use Beginnings Workshop to Train Teachers by Kay Albrecht

Getting Started: Meinen started her portfolio books by collecting things for the books. To get started, send teachers on a scavenger hunt to seewhat is laying around their classrooms that could go into a portfolio book. When they return, see if they found samples from each of thecategories listed in the article.

Considering Format: Many different formats are used for portfolios in this author’s program. What formats might work in your program? Collectresources to help teachers decide which formats might work for them.

More Than Just Products: Portfolio books, as conceptualized by Meinen, are more than products of children’s work. After teachers collectproducts from their classroom scavenger hunt, help them consider what else would be needed to bring the entry in the portfolio book to life.

Purpose Before Portfolio Books: Using portfolio books to connect families to their child’s school experience was one of several goals for thisteacher. Talk with teachers about what other goals a program might have for portfolio books.

Time! Time! Time!: Portfolio books sound extremely beneficial and time-consuming. Brainstorm strategies for getting portfolios completedwithout spending too much time in the preparation phase. Identify shortcuts, who else could help, etc. Try out your ideas.


SSuummmmaarryy

It’s not so important that my portfolio has a fancy cover, or that thepages are colorfully decorated. I enjoy adding the extra frills thatmake each portfolio unique. The heart of the portfolio is all the

information collected to put inside. While working onmy portfolios,

I havelearned theimportanceof docu-menting theprocess,which ismore impor-tant than theoutcomesand productsof children’swork.

When organized and put all together with pictures, work samples, and mostimportantly all the documentations mentioned earlier, the portfolio can be awindow to the child’s early years of learning at school; a view through ateacher’s eyes, highlighting the process of their learning. It has been a meaningful professional development journey for me as well.

Artwork provided by the author

Two three-year-old boys, in the Making Area, create some faces fromcardboard which they call Big Bird. These faces become the pivot forthe development of a puppet show. The boys use some outdoorblocks to divide the space so that they can stand behind a barrierwith their puppets and then they get some chairs for the audience tosit on. Other children who have been 'in the snowfields' and 'drivingtaxis' arrive for the ‘theatre/show’.

All the while the staff help the children organize their thinking andrecall their prior knowledge of the world, by asking questions such as“Do you have enough seats for everyone?”; “Do you think this showis for free or should we buy tickets?” (the children discuss this anddecide the show is free!); “What time should it start?” When thepuppet show does start and the puppeteers cannot be heard by theaudience, the teacher asks, “I wonder if the microphones are on?”which of course indicates to the puppeteers that they aren’t beingheard. This they resolve by raising their voices!

At the end of the show, the question, “How are we going to gethome?” results in the children who had been ‘taxi drivers’ setting upthe taxi ride home by lining chairs in a row. Comments from the‘passengers’, which include the teacher, such as “When I've been in‘taxis’ before we sat side by side, not in rows” resulted in more nego-tiation and compromise with a rearrangement of the seating.

This series of play episodes, with a range of 'players' participating atdifferent times, continued over the week. Each child had some prior,yet different, knowledge of 'theatre' or 'shows' and so, in order forplay to progress, the children collapsed their knowledge into mean-ingful actions, compromised, and negotiated. So learning occurred.This is known as event-based play.

The term event-based play evolved from a group of State Edu-cation Department preschool teachers working with Dr. Rose-mary Perry and Sue Thomas in Queensland, Australia duringthe 1980s.

These teachers had noted the positives of the children’sengagement in ‘make believe’ play where, as Dockett & Fleer

(1999: 14) state, children operate according to an ‘attitude ofmind’ and ‘where people, objects, and ideas are treated ‘as if’ theywere something else’ (ibid: 15) that is, pretence and playfulactivity. For example, when the child uses a wooden block asa telephone or holds his hand as if it were a phone. Thesepractitioners wanted to capture that enthusiasm and extendthe children’s overall play experience. They did this by recog-nizing the ‘Vygotskian theory that play is always a social, symbolicexperience,’ and that ‘the themes involved in play all relate to thesociety and culture in which children are situated’ (ibid: 63);thereby furthering the ‘as if’ element in their play basedcurricula.

To further establish the background to the development ofevent-based play, Perry, in her book Play Based PreschoolCurriculum highlights the five main functions of play as abasis for this approach to teaching. These functions are:

■ Play enables children to use symbols and to represent theirworld in a variety of forms — as children play, they frequentlyuse objects and actions symbolically. That is, they use them to repre-sent other objects and actions and in this way come to act in accor-dance with internal ideas rather than external reality (Vygotskycited in Perry: 1998). Very young children may need morerealistic objects to support their make believe play, whereas,by their preschool years children can ‘imagine objects and eventswithout any direct support from the real world’ (Berk, 1994).

As preschoolers’ play develops, so does their ability to make thesesubstitutions . . . this ability to separate meaning from objects and



Event-Based Play:Symbolizing Children’s Thinking

by Susan Whitaker

Susan Whitaker, Dip.T (E.C.) (Bris); MS,Wheelock College, Boston, Massachusetts, iscurrently a consultant in early childhoodcare and education in Brisbane, Australia.


to act on internal ideas is vital preparation for the development ofliteracy and numeracy (Berk cited in Perry: 1998; Bodrova andLeong cited in Perry: 1998). As children become skilled in usingobjects or take on roles ‘as if’ they were something or someone elsethey are separating an object or role from an idea. This same abilityis necessary in reading and writing where the letter looks nothinglike the sound it makes and a word looks nothing like the object itstands for . . . “ (Perry, 1998: 12).

■ Play promotes creative flexibility in thinking■ Play assists children to build their knowledge —constructed by living and learning in the social world, theybegin to build their own personal “scripts” of ‘what happenswhen . . . ’ (Nelson cited in Perry, 1998: 12).■ Play fosters language and social abilities.■ Play helps children jump above their usual level — Playserves to scaffold children’s learning. Play provides children withroles, rules, situations, or events which enable them to focus andattend at a higher level than is possible without the scaffoldingoffered by play (Perry, 1998: 13) (ibid:11).

So what makes event-based play different from some otherapproaches to teaching?

The event-based approach to teaching is one which encourageschildren to recall events, roles, and experiences which arefamiliar in their daily lives. In recreating familiar experiencesthey negotiate their own goal with the adults in the environ-ment.

Children, therefore, have the opportunity to recall familiarevents/experiences in their lives — what they know— andthrough their interactions with others, have that knowledgeextended and clarified, utilizing their own personal scripts —“what happens when . . . “ — to develop/negotiate sharedmeanings.

In practice, the traditional classroom might look somethinglike this:

■ Well resourced areas, attractively arranged equipmentsuited to the children’s interests and abilities, placed on lowopen shelving units;■ Materials might be organized into specific areas such as:block corner, puzzle/manipulative area, book corner,

collage/art area, home corner (which may take on the appear-ance of hospital, shop at times).

Some traditional approaches to learning may be that:

■ Children are very busy acting on objects and practicing theacquisition of skills — painting, cutting;

■ Children are engaged in dressing up in the Home Corner —trying on clothes, cooking a meal — activities they have donemany times before; ■ The play is based very much in the here and now;■ The challenge to draw on past experience is not apparent,there are no requirements on children to access past experi-ence;■ Children undertake a range of activities provided by theteacher with a view to achieving particular goals designatedby the teacher.

In an event-based classroom, the approach to learninginvolves:

■ The child’s world being introduced into the preschool/child care/school setting by the children and in recreatingevents in their lives — what happens when helps create a mean-ingful context in which they are able to access detail — whathappens next, what happens if . . . ;■ Children providing the context in which to expand theirknowledge; this, therefore, gives meaning and purpose tochildren, which in turn leads to increased motivation andempowerment;■ Children getting to play with their own ideas, to initiateand negotiate around their thinking: event-based play lies atone end of the child-initiated continuum.

Event-based play necessitates a rethink regarding the use oftime, space, and materials. For example:

Time:■ A group session is held and both children and adults getorganized for the session. Roles are established, spaces negoti-ated, time allowed, and materials collected.■ Children need long periods of uninterrupted time in whichto play.

Space:■ The children themselves negotiate the organization and thedefinition of space and are encouraged to do so. Hence, theclassroom might be divided into smaller areas and have avariety of walls to define the specific space needed — tradi-tional screens, lengths of material stretched between supports,sheets of cardboard.■ Chairs and tables may still be available for any of the tradi-tional activities that would be apparent in any good earlychildhood classroom. Tables may, however, be used as shopcounters, or turned upside down to become a boat; chairsmight be used as seats in a bus; wooden blocks may becomethe outline of the walls of a house or plumbing lines into afactory.


Materials:■ In several areas around the room, there are large amountsof open-ended materials readily available to children (largecontainers of cardboard, sheets of marine ply and timber,carpet lengths, lengths of material, crates, lengths of PVCpiping and so on).■ There is also a well-resourced, and large collage area withall sorts of materials, writing tools, paper, and paints avail-able. This area may be called the making area. Children work-ing in this area expand their involvement beyond just cutting,pasting, and painting activities. Here, there may be childrenmaking tickets for a concert, or invitations, party food, anddecorations. Children are making resources, which theyintend to use as part of their play/event/project. Childrencome and go from this area as the need arises.■ A large variety of props are also available to the children.These props may be needed to expand the as if element oftheir make-believe play ideas, i.e. sets of keys, torches, mobilephones, bunches of silk flowers, tool boxes, hair dryers aswell as clothes and hats — the list is only limited by the imag-ination of the collectors.■ And, so, to the role of the adult: event-based play offers anopportunity to get inside the young child’s thinking — an interest-ing place to be! (Perry interview: 2001). The role thereforeencompasses the notion of helping this thinking happen — bybuilding on what the children know, by being a facilitator,negotiator, co-operator, guide, planner, and player — but nota dominator, dictator, or director. This requires respect andtrust for each child and few pre-determined expectations —although the adult can reject the children’s ideas as can otherchildren, if unsafe or otherwise unacceptable. Children andadults develop shared understandings and goals for the play,together.

Event-based play shares many similar concepts with otherrecent teaching approaches, i.e. respect for children’s com-petence, a team-like approach to learning, child centeredand initiated programs, the importance of social context inscaffolding knowledge, and adult as learner with the child.The major differences are the emphasis on the use ofsymbolization as the basis for play, the social context of the child from which the play emanates, and the negotiatedshared meanings which develop.

This style of teaching can be applied as easily to the earlyyears of schooling as to the preschool years, although it does

not suit every practitioner in the early childhood field. Event-based play will continue to evolve and to assist with practi-tioners thinking about, and extension of, a play-basedcurriculum.

References

Berk, L. (1994). Vygotsky’s Theory: The Importance of Make-Believe Play. Young Children, (50)1, Washington, DC: NAEYC.

Dockett, S. & Fleer, M. (1999). Play and Pedagogy in Early Child-hood — Bending the Rules. Australia: Harcourt, Brace & Co.

Perry, R. (1998). Play-Based Pre-school Curriculum. Brisbane, Australia: QUT.

Resources

■ Video (1995). Thinking through Play — overview of the eventbased approach. Brisbane, Australia: Queensland University ofTechnology (QUT), (15 minutes).

■ Perry, R. (1998). Play-Based Pre-school Curriculum. Brisbane,Australia: QUT.

■ Perry, R. & Irwin, L. (2000). Playing with Curriculum — Strategies and Benefits. Brisbane, Australia: QUT. (Thispublication is for teachers in the early years of schooling)

These resources can be obtained from QUT Bookshop,Queensland University of Technology, Gardens Point Campus,Brisbane, Qld, Australia (QUT: www.qut.edu.au), phone: (61) 7 38643125, or e-mail: [email protected].



With thanks to Dr. Rosemary Perry (QUT) and toMs. Heather Conroy (University of Southern Queensland, USQ)

for their assistance in writing this article.

Using Beginnings Workshop toTrain Teachers by Kay Albrecht

Playing with ideas: Observe the children at play and be alert to any“events” from their experiences that they may be “re-creating” even in arudimentary way. To encourage the children to express/extend their ideas,introduce an appropriate prop (e.g., a bandage for the hurt baby doll) ortake on a role appropriate to the context. Later, brainstorm ideas withcolleagues for possible props and roles relating to common events. Be sureyour contributions support children’s ideas . . . not override them!!

Discovering differences: The two descriptions on page 50 describe play andlearning approaches in a traditional classroom and those in an event-basedplay classroom. Discuss these two descriptions with staff, exploring thedifferences and similarities.

Further Reading: Whitaker cites a book by R. Perry as a resource for event-based play. Order this book for your staff library.

bbeeggiinnnniinnggsswwoorrkksshhooppccie.com/library_bw/8214400.pdf · ann delights in young...

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