In our most recent blog post, we shared with you a learning experience involving two boys planning to create a ball maze (link: Ball Maze Plan). As an executive member of CAPE (Council of Associated Primary Educators- learn more about CAPE here), we choose this learning experience to highlight in CAPE’s latest webinar: Demonstrating Literacy and Mathematics Behaviour. This experience allowed the executive team and members to reflect on the ball maze inquiry to analyze and deconstruct the learning. This allowed us to delve deeper into the learning by considering what mathematical and literacy processes and behaviours could be identified in the drawings and clip. To take you through a similar analysis experience (as we engaged in during the webinar), please first take a moment to review the Literacy Processes by Fontas and Pinnell, and the Mathematical Processes on the slides provided here. Next, view the children constructing their ball maze and consider how the children are demonstrating the learning behaviours.
Now we ask you to take a moment to reflect on this quote by Dr. Lillian Katz (a world-renowned early years educator)
“…I have observed over and over again that when young children are intellectually engaged in worthwhile investigations, they begin to ask for help in using academic skills-for example, writing and counting, in the service of their intellectual goals”
Take a moment to ask yourself, in what ways might this quote link to the ball maze inquiry clip? While observing children in play, what learning do you see and hear?
This post leaves you with an opporutnity to reflect on this learning experience. In our next blog post, we hope to reveal some of the analysis of the learning through the comments and conversation from the webinar.
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Gina Marion and Caroline Thornton
Journey Together FDK 