pondering of one of Kim's aha's from the Reggio book:
"Start change in your classroom with picking 5 things so that you are not overwhelmed with trying to change it all at once."
What are your thoughts about where to start?
A couple of thoughts that I had are areas that we have discussed:
1. The importance of building a community of learners- of creating the environment to assist with being a school family. A beginning would be to add pictures of each child's family and an identity panel, with photo on one side and self - potrait on the other side.
2. The mood of the classroom with some key aspects that were mentioned such as
flexibility within structure- allowing items to move from one center to another, developing transitions that allow for continuous engagement of students instead of some waiting on the carpet etc. for a long time for others, and as Elizabeth wrote earlier, "encouraging children to see themselves and their peers as competent and resourceful and to allow children use real tools, do meaningful work and task acceptable risks."
3. I also loved the article Consider the Walls (in the Journey binder). Patricia Tarr talks about how commerically made
posters etc. that we hang for educational purposes may actually be limiting children's sense of who they truly are and true capabilities and stifles their imagination and creativity. She states, "So too does the mass of commercial
stereotyped images silence the actual lived experiences of those individuals learning together. An overload of commercial materials leaves little room for work created by the children—another kind of silencing." She goes on to
discuss the importance of displaying not only the children's finished products but documentation of the process of learning as well. Some of our other resources have addressed this point as well- I am thinking of two easy ways to
start with this concept: 1.would be to think of what is being displayed and why and if it is important to your educational goals and objectives- how can it be created by the students (example: one Pre-K teacher felt it was important to
have the colors displayed on her walls- so her students created the color posters which was much more meaningful to them and since it was created by them, they tended to reference and look at the posters more often than they would have
if it was limited to a commerically made design. They were beautiful and much more aesthetically appealing.)
Here's the link to the article: http://www.naeyc.org/files/yc/file/200405/ConsidertheWalls.pdf
2. Give greater importance and honor to children's work by placing it in a frame or on a shelf- in a place of honor. This communicates to the child that what they have created is important, has meaning and is worthy of being looked at by others. Frames are expensive but I've even seen the lids to shoe boxes covered to "frame" student's work or poster board cut into shape of frame and they both were beautiful displays of children's work. I have also found some very inexpensive frames this summer at garage sales, flea markets and Goodwill stores.(picture is from Elizabeth's room)
What are your thoughts about where to begin?
Below are some pictures- many from your buildings respresenting these three thoughts-