An Experiment...
10/3/2018
Last week, I wrote about the magic of referring to students as mathematicians, scientists, writers, readers, and more. However, I do not merely call our sweet little ones all of these things. I treat them as these things too. In my mind, they are scientists, mathematicians, readers, and writers. When we study something in science, we sometimes do experiments. When we do experiments, we follow the scientific method, just like older students and scientists do. Our kindergartners ask questions and make predictions. They conduct the experiment. They record the results. They share the findings. I expect them to do the work - the work of real scientists - and they are happy to do it. An important piece of project based learning is authenticity, which includes using real-world contexts, tasks, and tools. One of the things I love about teaching kindergarten is making the concepts and skills approachable for our littlest learners by keeping the learning developmentally appropriate and providing scaffolding (just the right amount of help). Young children find such joy and wonder in discovering more about our world and in using real-world tools and techniques to do so. To make it just right for them, we sing songs, play games, engage with the content through active activities, and break things down step-by-step. When I first started teaching, I taught preschool. My co-workers remarked skeptically about how I used actual vocabulary and strategies and methods we expect older children to use. But I knew my students could meet the challenge with the appropriate scaffolding and adjustments to make it more approachable and developmentally appropriate for them. Trusting them with authentic, real-world contexts and tasks now, like following the scientific method, builds the foundation for them to later work independently within these contexts. They will know how to study the world like a real scientist because they will have been doing it since the start. Treating them like scientists, mathematicians, writers, and readers empowers them. Even now, people sometimes incredulously ask me, "You do that with kindergartners?" Our littlest learners are capable of more than we sometimes give them credit for. I believe in letting them be little, but I also believe in giving them the opportunity to explore our world, to use technical vocabulary and real-world tools to do so, to engage with the world the way scientists do, the way mathematicians do, the way readers and writers do. Their products may look different than those of their older peers or adults (and rightly so), but our littlest learners can follow the process, learn from it, and enjoy it. So last week it was stop motion. This week it was an experiment and the scientific method. Throughout the year, I will trust and guide them to use real-world tools to complete other authentic tasks as well, things that other people might think are crazy to attempt with 5 year-olds... filming a weather forecast, making robots, conducting dissections, creating a campaign to help endangered animals, designing and building a life-size castle. They will continue to tackle real-world problems, engage in real-world tasks, and use real-world tools as they are immersed in projects throughout elementary and middle school. Through each experience, our little ones will learn that they can. They can be a scientist. Even though it looks a little different, they can follow the same procedures as real scientists, use similar tools, explore the world just like scientists do. They can be an engineer. They can be an inventor. They can be a reader, a writer, a mathematician, a world-changer. They can try all of these things and learn to see and explain the world in a new way each time. Some of our students are more timid to step into these roles, but each time they do, they see that they can do more than they think they can when they work hard and try.
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Saania AliMs. Ali graduated from the University of Houston with a Bachelors of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies. She specializes in Early Childhood Education, ESL, and Special Education. Her hobbies include traveling, reading, and painting! Archives
April 2021
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