Reflection Processes, Dramatic Play, and Self Portraits

Documentation for the week of November 7-11, 2016

The Power of Reflection in our Classroom

The children chose to use shovels and dig in the mud almost every day that we went outside in the past month.

Teacher Reflections

We as teachers have spent time reflecting with each other about what we noticed the children working on outside. There are many concepts and possibilities that could stem from a child’s desire to dig in the dirt. This reflection time gave us the tools to decipher the children’s true intentions as they worked. Our observations showed us that the children’s interests while digging in the mud have been around three main concepts:

·   digging for dinosaur bones

·   digging for treasure

·   planting seeds to grow trees

This showed us where to take our lessons next. We were able to see that the children would likely be interested in learning math, science, and literacy concepts if we relate them to digging, dinosaurs, treasure, and trees.

Children’s Reflections of Their Own Work

At noon each day, the children work on Play Stories. This is a time for them to draw a story about what they chose to do at school during the morning. Each child works with pencils, markers, or crayons to draw pictures about their reflections. Most days, though many things were happening in our classroom, the children chose to draw about their work outside. They drew pictures about digging in the dirt. They drew pictures about what they found in the dirt. One day almost every child drew a picture about how Ariel S. broke a tree. After she broke the tree, they chose to dig a hole to plant a new tree in the hole. The children dictated their reflections to Morah Tara, and she wrote them on their play stories. Morah Tara asked open ended questions such as, “Then what happened?” until each child told her that they were at the end of their story. Some children drew about how they planted seeds in the hole. Some children drew about how they dug a hole, and then were asked to go inside before they could take their work further. The children then hung up their current play story and put their play story from the day before into their play story binder. After rest time, the children came together again to have a group discussion about their play stories. Each day we choose two or three play stories to talk about. The children worked together to tell the story about their morning outside. They were then asked open ended questions by the teachers such as, “How did you feel when you saw the tree break?”

Reflection gives children a chance to link their day together. Most children live fully in the present moment. They are still learning about past, present, and future. When we create time for the children to reflect on their work, they are more likely to make connections between the lessons that they learned in the past with the lessons that they will face in the future. The children show us that they can continue working on old projects with new interest, because they have had a chance to file away their experiences into their long term memory. They are able to make sense of the world around them by telling stories about the lessons that they learned so that when similar experiences come up again, they are capable of retrieving the files more quickly and finding solutions to their problems with greater ease.

Reflection Time Together

After recharge time, we come together as a group and discuss two or three play stories. Each child has a turn to share their play story with the class at least once a week. This week, the children showed their stories about breaking the tree and digging a hole with each other. Again, Morah Tara asked open ended questions to continue the conversation and help the children find solutions to the problems that they encountered. We as teachers can see how proud the children are to share their work with the class. You can see from their body language that they feel important and heard. 

Sometimes we reflect on conflicts that children have with each other too. We are able to hear everyone's side of the story and work together as a group to talk about how their challenging interactions made them feel after the heat of the moment. Often there is new information from the children about why they made the choices that they made. For example, we were talking once about how Imie was hoping to play with Leah and Bayla, but Leah and Bayla wanted space to play together on their own. After gaining help from a morah, they chose to solve the problem by setting a timer for five minutes. After five minutes, Bayla and Leah would invite Imie to play with them. Imie understood that a solution was found, but she hid and cried during the five minutes that she waited for her turn to play. As this event happened, Imie was not capable of articulating what she was feeling, but when we came together during Afternoon Meeting, she shared with her friends that she didn't like that solution. She felt sad and wanted to be alone for a few minutes. When Leah and Bayla came to play with her, she said that she felt happy. The morahs could then help the children reflect even more on their solution to the problem. Would this be a good way to solve conflict in the future? What other strategies could we plan to implement instead? Leah shared that they could play together for one minute, then play separately another minute and on and on.

Returning to Our Work After Reflection Time

When Afternoon Meeting is over, we move on to study Aleph Bais. This week we used ribbons and pipe cleaners to create the first four letters of the Aleph Bais. The children chose to work on their own or with a friend to create the letters. Their attention to detail was so impressive. 

The children are then given another opportunity to play outside. This week the children found the branch that had been broken and decided to replant it in the ground. Eliya began this process by digging again. Imie and Ariel S. held the branch in the ground while Bayla, Lucy, Oree, and Hillel brought mud over to pack the branch into the earth. They worked together to try and make the branch stay in the ground. After a few minutes, Morah Tara said, "I wonder what would happen if you added rocks to hold up the branch." The children chose to collect large, medium, and small rocks to put around the branch. It worked! The children were able to make the branch stay in the ground. The time that they spent reflecting on their work, allowed them to solve a problem that was important to them.

Dramatic Play: We go to the Doctor

The work in the dramatic play area over the past two weeks has been exciting to watch! The children were able to share the sequence of events, a math skill, about what happens when they go to the doctor's office. Lucy, Oree, and Ariel F. shared with Morah Mirele that first they walk up to the counter. Then someone hands their parent a clipboard and they wait in the waiting room where there are toys and books. Next they go into another room where they wait to see the doctor. Then the doctor comes, asks them questions, and uses tools to check their heart, nose, eyes, and ears. This helped the teachers create a doctor's office that would match their experience in real life. The children sat in the waiting room where there were books and puzzles to play with, they pretended to be the person at the front desk taking in information, and they pretended to be doctors with tools and clipboards to check off the health of each patient. 

 

The intake process was an amazing event of literacy and numeracy learning! The children worked together to find the letters of each child's name on the keyboard. Then they asked about phone numbers and found the numbers on the keyboard too. If the child who was sitting at the keyboard was struggling, they helped each other to find the letter or number that they were looking for! 

   

The children also had a chance to write down information when they pretended to be the doctors treating the patients. They were also able to mimic behaviors that they had observed in their own experiences. These are all excellent skills for the children to be learning right now.

Self Portraits

The morahs planned a self portrait activity for Monday and Tuesday of this week. The children got so invested in this activity that we canceled other art projects so that they could continue working on their drawings! We printed a picture of each child and put it in a clear page protector. Then we gave the children permanent markers to color their faces. They all worked diligently to trace their facial features, and the results were beyond amazing! They each have a new self portrait in the frame above their play stories, and everyone made more to take home or hang in our hallway. They eventually chose to also draw each other's portraits. We discussed the difference between a portrait and a self portrait. 

In an effort to reflect on the children's continued interest in this activity, Morah Tara asked the children on Thursday what it was that they enjoyed the most about it. She asked if they enjoyed using clear page protectors to draw pictures. She asked if she should print other pictures for the children to draw next week, such as trees or animals. She asked if they really liked drawing pictures of themselves. Should she find a new way for the children to draw their faces next week? Oree said that she wanted to draw other pictures in clear sheets of paper. Eliya said he wanted to draw animals like a tiger. Bayla said that she didn't want to draw their faces in a new way; she would rather draw other pictures. In this way, we can link the children's interests in digging outside and planting trees to their work in the classroom by printing pictures about those types of activities. We will move in that direction next week, because the children shared that they like coloring real pictures on clear sheets of paper more than working on self portraits in a new way.