Playful Learning from Princesses to Airplanes

Today’s children are living in our commercial-driven consumer world just as we are, and it has indeed taken affect on them. Very young children are exposed to figures and characters of popular culture on a daily basis—after all, these products are deliberately marketed to them. While many teachers feel that such popular culture and media belongs outside the classroom, it has become evident to me over the past six months of observing elementary classrooms that a child’s interest is often the very best place to start.

Dr. Karen Wohlwend has conducted research in kindergarten classrooms, finding out how the way that children play is connected with their growing literacy practices. I have learned how informed teachers in early elementary classrooms can use their students’ interests as grounds for writing, drawing, making, playing, and communicating with their peers. Her research shows that by addressing these popular media themes in the classroom, children are actually given an opportunity to address, enact, and recreate how these well-known figures are portrayed. This allows children to express themselves through their own appropriated stories and creations—an abstract way to speak your voice.

Wohlwend reminds us that even when students are conversing with one another while playing, there is always something to be observed—something to learn. This ranges from girls repositioning princesses as sword-fighters, to editing and revising storyboards, to forming social barriers, to young boys exaggerating when playing the role of a girl—highlighting the contrast between who they are playing and who they are in real life. 

In the case of a boy who was fascinated by making paper airplanes, his teacher suggested he make a how-to book of directions for making paper airplanes for Writers’ Workshop. This writing activity combined the boy’s personal interest, something he could confidently do and explain how to do, with a bit of a challenge—transcribing his verbal instructions into directions for folding steps.

Students’ interests are wonderful tools for literacy development, even when they are popular media characters and stories. Great teachers find ways to merge the values of peer and classroom cultures so that all students can experience being directors, teachers, and learners.

On learning through playing...

I remember kindergarten, back in 1992. It was incredible. I remember meeting my best friend Cassie, at a short table covered in books near the front of the room; we were both really shy. I remember stations, reading books, making things all the time, and being very aware that Mrs. Kranz loved patterns. I remember Mrs. Kranz’s perfect handwriting, and deciding that ‘e’ was the most cheerful-looking letter in the alphabet. I remember one time marching around the room in a single-file line to the record player, and trying to improvise movements that went with the music. I remember feeling really awkward about it.

We had a class stuffed animal dog named Sunshine, which happened to be the exact same stuffed animal as my beloved Bitsy at home. Every day we sang, “You are my sunshine—my only sunshine. You make me happy—when skies are grey. You’ll never know dear—how much I love you. So please don’t take—my sunshine away.” Throughout the year, every kid in the class got to take Sunshine home for a weekend. He came with a journal. It was a collection of all the adventures he had with the students of our class. Each child (with the help of a parent) would write about what they had done over the weekend together. Every Monday we all got the latest update of the journal through this shared reading experience. We were creating our own current events, and keeping up with them through literacy—which allows all children to learn and participate.

If you had asked me when I was six, if I thought of these daily experiences as “learning,” I would probably have laughed. We were just having fun! Looking back, I see the many opportunities for growth in each of these activities. In her book Playing Their Way into Literacies: Reading, Writing, and Belonging in the Early Childhood Classroom, Dr. Wohlwend describes a kindergarten class where children “continually select from a range of choices to map out a unique learning path for themselves each day.” Kindergarten is a crucial, transitional year for young children—a year that can be described as an apprenticeship to becoming a student.

Children learn and discover through play practices when they make decisions, use what they know, work with others, communicate, and approximate different tasks, like reading, writing, and even teaching. As teachers and parents, it is important that we recognize the significance of play-based learning and encourage children’s enthusiasm to do so. Through playing, students can independently transform an idea into action, a story into a performance, and fifteen minutes into a wonderland of learning opportunities.

Inferring: "the heartbeat of comprehension"

When it comes to understanding a story, inferring and summarizing help a reader a great deal. What’s wonderful about these two strategies is that students already use them! When a child is asked, “How was your friend’s birthday party?” They might answer with an adjective, and then giving a brief summary of what they did. They may answer, “It was fun! We played games and ate cake and ice cream, and Riley loved the present I gave her.”

Pointing out to students how they are already using reading comprehension strategies in other daily situations is a great place to start. Pat Johnson and Katie Keier (2010) stress that it is not important for students to be able to name what they are doing—they do not need to have a term for inferring or for summarizing. Understanding these concepts and being able to use them is the real goal. 

One way that teachers and parents can help their readers is through modeling these strategies when reading aloud. A few weeks ago, I wrote about a great mini-lesson that a teacher used in the multiage classroom that I observed last semester. As she read Poppleton, the students made inferences about Poppleton’s feelings, and how they changed throughout the story. By watching the demonstration and think aloud, the students knew exactly what they were supposed to do when they went to read independently. They successfully marked how they thought the characters were feelings in their books with sticky notes.

There are countless books that lend themselves nicely to making inferences. For example, in stories where the main character is never actually described by the narrator, but rather readers can figure out what he or she is like based on their actions. Stories that have a conflict or a mystery are also great for making inferences because the plot works towards resolving the problem, and meanwhile the reader can use clues and other information from the story to infer how it will be resolved. Poems are another great choice for trying to figure out meaning, because the poets convey so many ideas in a limited amount of words.

Every year in third grade, students across America will be asked, “What is the main idea of this passage?” on a standardized test (Johnson & Keier, 2010). As teachers and parents, we can help our students long before that third grade test—and not even for the sake of the test. We can begin talking about reading, thinking about the story, thinking about the characters, making predictions about the characters, and summarizing main points early on so that children grow up understanding the power of a story—for their own benefit. There are plenty of opportunities to build the concept of inferring and summarizing in everyday events. It is up to us to make the best use of them.

Be real.

When it comes to assessing children on their reading skills there is much to think about. We must pay close attention to what children are able to do on their own, and what they need more guided practice with. If we are to help children learn in a day-to-day classroom, as educators, we cannot wait around for the results from a standardized test, nor can we expect those results to tell us anything significant about the individual needs of our unique readers. We are far more capable, ourselves, of learning where a student is on their literacy quest, and providing them with tools to get there.

What we can do is use authentic, ongoing, and informative assessment, as Pat Johnson and Katie Keier suggest in their book Catching Readers Before They Fall. We must utilize the power of observation to understand where our readers are, what they need, and how we can help them get there. Keeping records and notes of these observations in a very organized accessible system is key. This way we will become familiar with what strategies the student is currently trying, and be able to make decisions about further instruction. By keeping consistent records we can find patterns and see progress over time.

It’s also essential to have authentic conversations with students about the text they are working with. By asking questions and having students retell the stories we are giving them real opportunities for comprehension. These personalized ways of working with students are just that—personal. No standardized test, computerized reading program, or phonics work alone is going to help children become better readers. Children will learn to read and write by practicing reading and writing. On top of that, they must enjoy it.

Today I listened to a podcast on the Voice of Literacy with Dr. Caitlin Dooley. In discussing the high stakes testing that we are dealing with today in our nation’s schools, she mentioned our need for more authentic assessment. I think that students should be able to use the real-life reading and writing skills that they learn in school in assessments. They should not have to deal with and understand the complicated test language and test-taking strategies that teachers nowadays discuss with their students. If the point is to become a proficient reader and writer, our students need engaging opportunities to do just that, on a daily basis.

Dr. Dooley points out that while No Child Left Behind was intended to help our most struggling readers improve, it has actually created a gap in the level of instruction. She says that in terms of achievement, we are at the same place that we were in the 1980s. What can we do about it? As P. David Pearson suggests, we can give students text that is interesting, text that focuses on well-known topics for children like friendship, betrayal, and trust, and then have rich conversations about it. I remember the first time I really devoured a novel in high school. I was sixteen, it was The Great Gatsby, and we did it as a class with our teacher as a guide. For the first time I really thought about literature; it actually meant something to me. It transformed books into story worlds, which you can disappear into. I needed that experience to get to that point. As Dick Allington points out, “How are they going to get better if they don’t read?”

Reading comprehension is personal and eclectic.

How do you explain how to understand? How can you make sense of how to make sense? When it comes to teaching reading comprehension, these are things you must be able to talk about and demonstrate. There is no master plan for this because different students have different needs. Some students learn to comprehend what they read without ever having a discussion about it, while some require demonstration and guided practice. We can model how we use strategies, allow students to converse about these demonstrations, and guide them into working independently.

Last semester I observed a multiage classroom, grades 1-2-3, and in the beginning I wondered how it was possible to teach a wide range of students reading and writing skills when they are all at such different levels. It wasn’t long until I was continually amazed at how the teacher’s lessons and demonstrations could be interpreted by students age six to ten. The class would come together for directions before starting their writer’s workshop or independent reading time, and during that time she would read part of a story or go over a piece of her writing with the whole class. The focus would range from persuasive writing to following a character’s emotions in the story to understand how he or she is feeling. She would always think-out-loud, and share with the class what strategies helped her become a better reader and writer.

One great example of a shared demonstration was when this teacher was going to read aloud a book about one of the class’s favorite characters—Poppleton. The focus of the mini-lesson was to pay attention to the characters feelings and how they change throughout the story. They knew Poppleton well, so it was a great book for this. They made a list on large chart paper of the character’s traits, which stay the same, and the character’s feelings, which change as you read. The students contributed what they knew about Poppleton; he is “calm, patient, kind, and quieter.” As she read, everyone paid close attention to his feelings, and raised their hands when his emotions changed. They wrote the feelings on post-it notes and stuck them on the pages. He started out happy, then became annoyed, then felt awful, and then happy again. She explained how thinking about Poppleton’s feelings helped her understand the story better, because she knew how the character was feeling because of what was happening. Then they went off to practice this on their own, putting post-it notes with emotions in the books they were reading.

I came to realize that this worked so well was because she was modeling strategies that work for her, and explaining how students could use it when they are reading. Every student must figure out what works best for them, and eventually develop their own system of reading for meaning. For some students maybe this strategy really helped, and perhaps some students were already there. Pat Johnson’s example of reading a newspaper article to answer her questions in Catching Readers Before They Fall reminded me of this example.

The bottom line is that reading comprehension is personal and unique to every student. Despite what the authorities are telling teachers to teach when it comes to reading, I am coming to find that the best teachers know to follow the students. Check in with them, monitor their progress, have little conferences, and really get to know them and their abilities. Only then will you know what they really need to work on, and what strategies may help them get where they are going—in a way that makes sense to them.

Don't you read what you want to read?

I have been observing elementary classrooms for the past few months. There have been aspects of the daily classroom agenda that I have witnessed, even helped out with, but not understood the logic behind. One example of this is leveled reading, which I have helped out with, usually in 15 to 20 minute increments. Naturally, different groups of children have responded to their leveled-guided reading groups in different ways. I have seen eight-year-olds partner up and read about rivers and glaciers enthusiastically, and I have also seen students who cannot approach this as an authentic reading experience because the text is something they could care less about.

After reading Let’s Start Leveling about Leveling by Glasswell & Ford, I have come to realize that reading is a very powerful and complex process that should not be simplified down to numbers and levels. More than anything, students need interesting text; they need to be engaged with what they are reading. Even if a book is above a student’s level, if they are intrigued by it, as teachers and parents we should celebrate this. Glasswell & Ford (2011) say, “Books are just books in the end. And while it’s easy to be critical of certain materials, they are usually neither inherently bad nor good. What matters more is the way they are used; it is this that determines the potential impact they can have.”

We need to keep in mind how these systems are created, who our children are, and what reading is about. These systems are designed mathematically, using criteria like number of words, number of pages, skills like “word identification accuracy,” and then assigns a letter to represent their ability on a ladder which children are expected to steadily climb. Children, on the other hand, are young people. They are human beings with imaginations, personal interests, and exponential learning capacities. I can’t help but think that if I was eight years old (or six years old, or ten years old), and I finally had the power to read, that I would want to use that power to find out about what I am interested in. Readers have the right to enjoy reading. After all, it is a language created for humans to communicate. And that is personal.

In the end, the judgment of the teacher—who knows their students’ interests and abilities—is more valuable than what a system of leveled books suggests. I plan to collect a library of children’s books on a wide range of subjects, fiction and non-fiction, to engage a wide range of readers. I think that students should get to choose books that interest them, and that they should be provided large amounts of time to read independently for enjoyment during the school day.

Vocabulary, in systems

Over the weekend I listened to a podcast on Voice of Literacy, with Dr. Neuman of the University of Michigan. She traveled the country researching programs that concentrate on vocabulary in the very early elementary years. She found that teachers at middle school and high school levels assume vocabulary lessons are taught at the primary level, but they are not. Out of 55 different schools visited, there were no planned lessons in vocabulary. It appeared that explicit vocabulary instruction was missing from the curriculum.

Dr. Neuman tells teachers and parents, “Focus more explicitly on vocabulary development early on.” This is why she has launched “World of Words”—or “WOW” as it is called—encouraging young children to become word-conscious. Young children deserve to have a curriculum that can accelerate vocabulary knowledge so that they can go into the latter grades of elementary school prepared, knowing the appropriate words to talk about ideas in science, social studies, and math.

Children need to have a self-teaching mechanism to work from. Yes, children learn from their teachers and their modeling of strategies, but children also need to learn on their own. One way that this can be setup for children is to teach words in categories or groups. When there are categories of words (ex. apple, strawberry, mango, banana), the child will have the opportunity to recognize the word itself, as well as how it is connected to a particular group. Systems like these help children organize their ideas and connect new knowledge to what they already know, expanding their schema. Now when they hear, “A pear is a kind of fruit,” they can make connections to the other fruits they know, enhancing their conceptual development.

These somewhat abstract ideas and strategies can be illustrated to children with charts. In an article called Schema, Miller says that “Charting holds thinking—it makes our thinking public and permanent, and traces our works together.” Being able to see your thoughts mapped out is a great advantage, and children love seeing their thoughts too, up in front of the class. It shows them that they are an integral part of the lesson and that their thoughts are important.

Dr. Neuman says that the bottom line is “oral language comprehension is the foundation of early literacy development.” She encourages us to engage in responsive talking with kids, and work on their agenda. Listen to what they have to say, use intelligent language, and answer all of their questions—even if it’s nonstop. These children are learning from us, so it is important not to talk down to them, but to use interesting words like fatigue, as Dr. Neuman suggests. Hearing new words perks up children’s minds and gets them thinking in new ways. Providing systems for them to organize and remember these words—even better.

Plateau? "Sound it out."

I specifically remember a time when I mispronounced a word in fourth grade. We were in geography class, popcorn reading our textbook, and it was my turn. I was a very proficient reader and usually loved reading out loud to show off my skills. However, on this particular day, in this particular unit, there was a new word for me—one that I had heard before, but had never seen in writing—one I could not sound out letter by letter. The word was “plateau.” I was reading loud and proud and tried to keep my cool when approaching the word. I tried to maintain my rhythm of confident reading as I frantically sounded it out in my head. Out of my mouth came the word “plat-TAY-yoo” and even before any of the other nine and ten year olds in my class started laughing, I knew that it didn’t sound right.

Popcorn reading is belittling for this reason. If I had been reading this on my own, I could have tried it a few different ways without the pressure of an audience. If I had thought about the context, or looked at the landscape diagram in the picture I could have figured it out. There is no way to sound out “plateau” in English, yet there are other avenues I could have gone to figure it out.

Whether or not you grew up using “sound it out” as your reading strategy for difficult words, you are probably familiar with it. You make the sound of each letter in a tricky word, blend the sounds together, and are able to say the word. Right? As it turns out, you cannot effectively “sound out” 40 to 50 percent of the English language. It really makes you wonder why the National Reading Panel Report and No Child Left Behind advocate systematic synthetic phonics (Compton-Lilly, 2005).

What children, parents, and teachers need to know is that there are other strategies for figuring out tricky words that are much more helpful. There are visual and structural cues to pick up on, as well as thinking about the meaning of what the words say together. Readers can ask themselves, “Does it look right?” along with, “Does it sound right?” and of course, “Does it make sense?” As fluent speakers, children have a great understanding of their language in spoken form—they can use this to their benefit when it comes to written language.

When helping a child learn to read, it is crucial to not only model different strategies for figuring out words, but to call those strategies what they are. It may sound obvious, but if you are demonstrating how to look at the structure of the sentence to check to see if a word looks right, you would not call this “sounding it out” because that is not what you are doing. Similarly, if you are breaking the word into chunks that you know and saying the sounds together, explain that you are doing that. If you are looking at the picture or the rest of the words for clues as to what a certain word is, then explain that. If children hear adults repeatedly tell them to “sound it out” when they mean something else, then the child is at a loss of what to do.

 

As Johnson and Keier (2010) say in their book, Catching Readers Before They Fall,

“If we expect children to predict, search for, and gather information from the various sources of information; reread; and check and confirm predictions, then we need to model how to do those things” (p. 67).

On understanding and fostering meaning-making

Drawing and mark-making came very naturally to me when I was little. I’ve always thought that there is a feeling that must go along with drawing; that is how you know where the lines go. I see lines in text and images—how they connect and intersect, and the shapes they make together. Perhaps this was a great advantage to me when learning to write. All of my memories surrounding learning to write involve the style of my handwriting. I do not remember being challenged by the direction of my letters, nor the sizes and heights in relation to one another, nor the technicalities of upper- and lower-case letters. For me, it was about the style. It was as though I could recall words based on the shapes their letters created together, and what the space looked like around them. I knew a word was right if it looked right, and felt right, just like drawing. As a student studying to become an elementary teacher, I am now trying to understand the early process of reading and writing as a form of meaning making for children.

I found it quite interesting to read that young children often do not distinguish between drawing and writing because they both convey meaning. It made me think back to my own early literacy experiences, where illustrating a picture was usually much preferred over writing a story. In the article by Kate Foley Cusumano, Every Mark on the Page: Educating Family and Community Members about Young Children’s Writing, she says that every mark is made for a purpose (2008). These lines, marks, and dots have meaning together, in a system, whether it is the conventional system that adults expect to be able to read or not. Young children are trying to figure out their language in written form, of course they will make mistakes on the way.

Adults, parents, and family members notice these spelling, letter, grammar, and punctuation mistakes before anything else. Perhaps it is because those are the only components that most people would think to look for, but what they are looking past is all of the brave progress the child has made by risking to write what she or he did in the first place. When a child creates something, they do it with a purpose. And there is a lot going on. They must structure what they are writing; they must make a decision in laying out the page, in choosing how to orient the letters and words. They choose how to convey a word, with invented spelling or even using the first letter to represent a word; and they choose how to begin a story. All of these critical decisions made by the student are evident in their work. These creative choices are what need to be celebrated and encouraged. Think about how much more exceedingly difficult a task becomes when you have people monitoring and analyzing you. I would bet it is even worse when they do not know what to look for in your work.

Cusumano said that 90% of children come to school believing that they can write (2008).  She also said that when children are not allowed to invent their own spelling, and are made to correct their spelling mistakes it can actually stunt the natural development of writing skills in these young children (Cusumano, 2008). As a future teacher, I see how communicating what we know about how children learn with the families and parents is incredibly important for the success of our students. Imagine the growth potential for our students if they can go home and practice the same skills they would at school, and be supported and praised by family members who understand their literacy journey, and can be proud of their hidden successes along the way. By communicating, we can make this a reality.

Digging for literacy? Donuts may be more helpful than you think.

Over the weekend I went on a “literacy dig” with some fellow pre-service teachers to find literacy in the community that our children are undoubtedly absorbing on a daily basis. It was interesting walking around a large shopping center to think about all of the sights, sounds, colors and ideas that children are taking in. They are continually exposed to literacy outside of school, and need it to communicate in the world, so why not use everyday experiences to teach your students about literacy?

On our literacy dig we were focused on the signs, surroundings, people, language, and printed text within the store. I was focused on the physical environment, noticing the bright white atmosphere, the rows of rectangular fluorescent lights dispensed across the ceiling, and the shiny black balls containing security cameras stuck in the ceiling everywhere. I thought about how a child might view this all too common space—everything organized, with red embellishments everywhere you look, pictures of happy people hang from the ceilings, red signs with white lettering are spaced out along the ceiling. What does all this tell a child? How do they receive this visual information? How does it make them feel?

There are red kiosks with red telephones, red shopping carts, red shopping baskets, and employees walking around all in red t-shirts. Naturally, red is known to make one anxious, and fluorescent lights never help such a matter. What is a child to make of this completely sense-overloaded environment? Will they point out the numbers and letters they know? Will those numbers and letters recall numbers or letters they have seen in other places? Will they try talking to anyone in the store? Is it a shopping experience they will reenact with other children? Will they talk about it after it is over?

In an article by Rebecca Powell and Nancy Davidson entitled “The Donut House: Real World Literacy in an Urban Kindergarten Classroom,” a kindergarten classroom practices literacy through all the efforts involved with creating a donut shop in their classroom. The article reinforced the idea that students have to want to understand. We can do this by posing the projects as real world literacy events—like taking your students on a field trip to a donut shop so that they can see for themselves how it is done, and then allowing them to create their own donut shop, by going through all the requirements you would in real life. Through taking notes on their field trip, making lists for supplies, brainstorming names for their shop, writing and reading letters and applications, and creating a big book documenting their experience to read and re-read later, they put their literacy skills to use. Every new step leading up to their “Grand Opening” was a new practice opportunity.

These are the skills that students will take away from school and apply to their lives. Powell and Davidson (2005) said that it is especially important for students living in high-crime and high-poverty areas to believe that they have the ability to transform their life circumstances. Perhaps you could agree that what goes on in the real world is often times far more interesting than learning spelling and practicing your grammar. This is precisely why it is important for students to get their literacy practice through means of more meaningful inquiry projects. In the example of The Donut House, the students engaged in reading and writing through a number of ways you would in your adult life. As Powell and Davidson (2005) put it, “Their literacy can be used for transformative ends.” Bringing real-world literacy into the classroom shows students how reading and writing skills they learn in school will be essential in their everyday lives, and how it can change their lives.

The beginning of ideas gathered

I have always liked the idea of learning centers. In my third grade classroom we had at least fifteen different learning centers, and I remember all of them being great.  I think that one of the best things about elementary school is that you get to explore a little bit of everything, and much of it is done through making things, playful activities, working with your peers, and using your imagination. There is something for everybody. All the activities children engage in have the power to teach them something—whether it is through greeting their classmates in morning meeting, listening to the way an advanced reader’s voice makes words flow together, or listening to their classmates share their ideas.

Anna Lyon and Paula Moore (2003) describe two learning centers in a preschool classroom in the book Sound Systems. Each center served as a multimodal response to a book their teacher had been reading aloud about farm animals. One station had a bucket of mud, a bucket of water, and plastic animals. Children could get the animals all muddy, and then wash them—just like in the story. This gave them the opportunity to physically engage in the task, play in the mud, and have a similar real-life experience. In another station they could paint paper animals, make puppets, and use them to act out the story—another great opportunity for preliterate students to show their understanding and respond to a text. I thought it was so wise of this teacher to have options for all kinds of learners. I liked how these activities used many senses and have the potential to reach all learners.

I also noticed that on multiple occasions the teacher in this particular text, Ms. Douglas, was so flexible to change her plan and use the students’ ideas, constantly teaching on her feet. By listening to what the children are thinking and ideas they have to offer, she is able to connect literacy lessons to her students. In one instance, a student suggested they make a list to prepare for their field trip the following day. As a group, they made the list beginning with Don’t forget your jacket, each student contributed what they knew about letters and sounds—an f here, and a j there—they found great successful working and learning as a community. This teacher’s pedagogy gave me many ideas to think about.

Another idea I found intriguing in Sound Systems was using the egocentric nature of children. I often imagine how children think, and I had never thought about this before. It makes sense that everything should be about them—it’s what they know about, it’s what they are comfortable with. Even as adults, we often find it easier to talk about and write about ourselves. This is a starting place. Children have a collection of sounds and words that are familiar, like their names, the names of their family members, and the words that they use in everyday speech. We can guide them in making connections to other sounds and words to make sense of the printed alphabet, and of language. I look forward to learning from more fantastic examples like these.