Monday, March 2, 2020

Trying Thrice - Loose Parts & Learning Invitations

One of the best things about being a specialist teacher is that you get the opportunity to try lessons more than once, with different classes. This is helpful because, after reflecting on the lesson's successes and failures, I can modify / improve the lesson and try again.

I see three kindergarten classes for library time and media literacy instruction. A couple of weeks ago, I taught a simplified version of this lesson, posted on the AML website, about the 2020 winner of the Best Animated Short Film, "Hair Love".

I wanted to dive in a little more into some of the ideas and themes from this fantastic film. I also wanted to try out some of the approaches and techniques advocated in the Kindergarten Additional Qualification course that I'm currently taking with Gail Bedeau and Kenisha Bynoe, especially loose parts and learning invitations.

These aren't "100% ideal learning invitations" (I said this to Gail or Kenisha who questioned me on this - I don't mean that they aren't perfect, but that they deliberately don't completely follow some of the guidelines for creating learning invitations as we've been shown in our course.)

First Try - Monday, February 24, 2020 with "K2"

This was my first attempt at organizing some learning invitations designed on my own. The hard part was that it was during the second period of the afternoon, which meant I couldn't set up in advance. (We were using the tables for another purpose with a different class immediately before this lesson.) The set-up felt very rushed, even though I made plans so that at least two of the adults in the room could be free to fix the items up strategically by having the students re-watch the film. The lucky part was that Jennifer Balido-Cadavez, amazing ECE teacher, actually had loose parts that she was able to quickly bring from her kindergarten class to the library to supplement my meager supplies. (I wish I could buy more but Phase 6 of ETFO's current work-to-rule stipulations states that we are to temporarily refrain from using our own personal funds to supplement our classrooms.)

I have a paper called "A Guide to Planning An Invitation for Learning" (created by Kenisha Bynoe and Angelique Thompson) and the second step is to select a text, photo or artifact. I chose a trophy (artifact) for one of my invitations and the actual book "Hair Love" (text) for the second invitation. I was nervous about my third media text choice. I picked my cherished puppet doll. I've noticed that toys aren't often (or ever?) part of a learning invitation, but I was uncertain how to explore hair without something with hair. (Jen Cadavez solved this within days, but more on that later.) I also wondered if only having a single head of hair would cause disagreements between the children. I debated with myself and others and brought out a "second head". This invitation, of all of the ones I attempted to design, felt the most limited in scope and possibilities.

The third step to planning an invitation for learning is to develop a question. This is the hard part for me. The question has to be open-ended, offer many possibilities for play and learning, and more - all of this, with the chance that students might not attempt to read the question and that it wasn't 100% required to read the question to the students. The questions were "How might we celebrate?" / "How might we help Zuri?" / "How might we show love?"




I know that, in my Kindergarten AQ course, we aren't getting around to the topic of pedagogical documentation until March 11, but I was determined to try and observe and document (via anecdotal notes, photos and videos) as best as I could. Thanks go to SC and Mrs. Cadavez for quickly capturing as much as they could.

Three big things that I noticed were:
1) Many of the students had no clue what to do at the learning invitations. Some just stared and froze.
2) The students who chose the "hair-focused" learning invitation ignored the young black figure in favor of the adult white blonde figure. When I made a suggestion that all four students presently at the invitation didn't have to limit themselves to one figure, they just looked at me. I discretely rushed over to Mrs. Cadavez to share my observation and ask her what to do. We "traded" spaces to watch and once she started playing with and interacting with the black doll, then other students followed her lead.
3) At the hair centre, the students really enjoyed digging through the supply bin and discovering some objects I hadn't even considered them using. It gave me a lot of insight into their extensive background knowledge and schemas.

This is a birthday cake from the "celebrate" invitation


Second Try - Thursday, February 27, 2020 with "K1"

As you can imagine, I spent a lot of time discussing with SC and Mrs. Cadavez discussing what we saw and what our next steps should be for K2. In the meantime, I had my AQ class on Wednesday, February 26. The guest speaker was Angelique Thompson and her topic was "Comprehensive Literacy Programming in Play". She said a lot of fantastic things during her presentation, but one of the most powerful for me was helping students learn how to interact playfully with loose parts.


Thankfully, the class I was going to try this with for the second time had their kindergarten media period immediately after lunch - which meant I had time to carefully set up the learning invitations in a much less-rushed, more thoughtful way. I was going to pull the blonde "Barbie head" out of the invitation, but Mrs. Cadavez asked me not to; she said it could be an interesting comparison and wondered if the other class would react in similar ways to her students.

For "How might we help Zuri?", I added iPads for potential photo documentation (plus, in the book and video, Zuri uses some sort of electronic tablet device to look at her mother's vlogs to understand how to style her hair). I tried to minimize the supply box's presence (but was still interested to see if they wanted to explore its contents, so I left it there). For "How might we celebrate?" I was much more deliberate in how I set items up, with symmetry, patterns, and objects. (I desperately wanted the containers to match, but didn't have enough of the same type.). For "How might we show love?" all objects had containers.

We also tried a modified version of Angelique's steps to becoming comfortable with using loose parts for play. (She said to Observe / Think / Explore / Create / Document. Her guiding questions were "What do you see? What can you do with it? How might you use the materials?" and I used the first and third questions with the students.) I recorded their ideas on a paper I left at an empty table.





There's no such thing as "wrong play" (at least, I hope not) but this time around, things seemed to go smoother. To my great relief, both dolls were used as part of the play, although a certain subset of girls showed an obvious preference for the blonde head. I loved that both boys and girls gravitated to all three invitations. The presence of the iPads had an odd effect - one of the students took one, turned it on and started flipping through it. When I asked her what she was going to do, she said "Go on YouTube". I'm not sure if it was connected to the film, when Zuri looks up her mom's videos, or if it was just a "this is what we do on an iPad" reaction.

J put clips in her own hair

Built at the celebrate area



Third Try - Friday, February 28, 2020 with "K3"

My concern for this class was that it is a smaller group without an Early Childhood Educator present; this meant one less adult present to help with pedagogical documentation. (We have a SNA with this class but she had her hands full with the student who needs her help and couldn't spend time taking notes.) I made fewer changes to the learning invitations but still tweaked things a bit. Once again, this class occurred immediately after lunch so I had time to carefully set up the learning invitations. I tried to make the writing tools more interesting in the "How might we help Zuri?" by placing some of the hair bobbles in the clear cup with the pencils. I also placed some of the hair ties in the black puppet's hand.





I wish I had video taped or captured the audio when I gave this group a tour of the learning invitations. One student in particular loudly and delightedly made many positive comments and connections between the invitations and the film had just watched, saying things like "That doll looks just like the girl in the movie! And look, there's the book that looks just like the movie! And oh, the markers are in a pattern - see, it's red, blue, red, blue!"

I asked SC to watch the "How might we help Zuri?" invitation while I attended to the other two. It was hard to capture everything, because there were SO many examples of the students demonstrating the four frames (Belonging and Contributing / Self-Regulation and Well-Being / Literacy and Mathematics Behaviours / Problem Solving and Innovating). SC told me that she was so touched by how sweetly some of the students treated the puppet in particular.

Only one student at the "How do we show love?" invitation struggled. "What do I do?" she asked. Another student arrived at the invitation and promptly started making a heart. By the end, she created four hearts with four different sets of materials. The student who was initially befuddled took inspiration from this other child and made her own heart.



A's picture combined chalk and jewels

D, with 4 different types of hearts

S's patterned heart, inspired by D
What also wowed me was the ingenuity and problem solving of K and D. They weren't satisfied with the limited colours of wipe-off markers I had set up in the "How might we celebrate?" learning invitation - so K grabbed my bin of Sharpies that I had elsewhere. At first, I freaked out a bit - Sharpies don't come off whiteboards easily! Then, I thought I shouldn't limit them, so reluctantly I gave back the Sharpies I initially confiscated. K and D tried to erase it but it didn't come off, but then D yells out, "Wait, see this works! Colour with one of these markers on top and it'll come out!" (And it did - not perfectly, but it did!)

Remember the first group, K2? Jennifer Cadavez was busy contemplating how to address this potential bias around hair types.

Not only did she create a learning invitation (which was, no offence to me, way more awesome than mine), but she CO- CREATED it WITH THE STUDENTS! I asked her to tell me all about it and she texted me this description:

The students helped me co-create this learning invitation. After our media class, we found a book in our class library about hair. I began to set up the table for the invitation and one student said, "What are you doing?". I said, "I am planning to make a loose parts invitation for the class." The student began to start cutting pieces of coloured yarn. "If you spray paint your hair, it can be green like this string." "If you use pipe cleaners and twirl it around your finger, it can be like the curl."

Talk about being a responsive educator! Jennifer helps me and inspires me so much, and not just me. The loose parts learning invitations and the observations helped shape SC's upcoming kindergarten media lessons (because she'll be teaching 100% of the time for the next two weeks).
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1 comment:

  1. Lisa NobleMarch 2, 2020 at 6:14 PM

    I am in a place right now where this made me weep. I love the collaboration, the let's try this, the rethink. You amaze me. Your willingness to just keep on learning, to think about different techniques and information, and above all, your humility, blow me away. Thank you so much for this.

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