Here we are, back from the holiday. There is, as expected, a more structured day. The morning starts off with some phonics and then guided writing. The approach they have for this is quite interesting; they show a picture on the whiteboard, a jungle kind of thing, and the children have to write first the sentence “I can see…” and then write words of objects or animal they can see in the picture. The choice is totally autonomous and it’s interesting to see how the children’s interests come to surface. Teachers and assistant teachers stay around to support pupils and make sure that everyone is on task, they also write the correct spelling of the words under the children’s writing.
It’s 9:30 and busy time is announced. I sat at the table where usually children draw or do some writing on their own, in my mind I call it the child-led table. Kira is making an envelope out of an A4 and soon Rachel want one too. I suggest that Kira (who is about 5 months older than Rachel) should explain every step she takes to create the envelop, and then help Rachel in making one. I am delighted with their enthusiasm and collaboration, and obviously Rachel made thousands of envelopes. I have seen here the ZPD in action, and the value that sometimes can arise by not grouping children by abilities. While all this envelope activity was going on we all started (4 children and I), to talk about sounds, specifically the sound ch. It all started because I drew a cherry, and from there we were looking for words that had the sound ch. We spent a good 15 minutes on that, and some invented words came up too. This stands in harmony with Chukovsky’s view that children don’t simply play with objects but with the abstract of words.
Before lunch time, the circle time learning input was about math, more specifically additions. I was fascinated about how this was taught. The teacher drew 3 circles on the board, two at the same level and one below, which she called bubbles. She drew some spots in the first two, then asked which bubble had the biggest number of spots. Once that was decided, she told the kids to take the highest number and put it in their heads, and count from there, using the other hand to check they were adding the right one. That must sound really confusing being said like that, I will try to make a representation of it. It never occurred to me how you teach addition as such a young age, and it has been quite enlightening.