One of the things that I think early childhood
educators sometimes overlook
is the power of peer-to-peer relations, friendships,
and at a very young age
Hi, I'm Drew from Storypark, and we're here
at the University of Toronto in the department
of Applied Psychology and Human Development
and I've the honor of interviewing Jane Bertrand,
so stay tuned!
I think we now know from the science that
it's not just parallel play and real friendships
develop at age five
real friendships develop in infant rooms with
young babies noticing each other
they have preferences for some babies over
others
they're delighted when their preferred friend
comes in, they play together
and even in infants, definitely in two year
olds and three year olds
children in early childhood settings spend
more time with other children than they do
interacting with adults
just by the numbers
if there's eight three year olds for every
adult, there's going to be more time interacting
with other kids
and we don't necessarily pay as much attention
to those interactions and what we can do to
nurture them, to challenge them and use them
for learning opportunities
I think our European friends, early childhood
educators, are more attuned to this and pay
more attention to that
and I think it's something we could pay more
attention to
how do we set up environments?
How do we encourage peer-to-peer interactions?
Friendships, yes, and all that goes with friendships
and learning to get along
and the social emotional learning
but also the cognitive learning that happens,
with the language
How can we set up learning experiences that
require co-operation, and children to share
their ideas with each other?
Strong socio-dramatic play require that kids
share a fantasy
and they get into roles and they stay in those
roles and share a fantasy
I would guess if you and I and two other friends
got together and tried to have an extended
forty-five minute play session,
where we had no script, but we had to keep
it all up here, who was who, and what the
storyline was,
we'd be challenged
four and five year olds, who have good environments
set up for that, and educators who know judicious
questions to ask and materials to bring in,
but mostly observe,
can do that, they can do it for an hour, they
can continue day after day with the same narrative
continuing on
that's pretty sophisticated stuff
Yeah absolutely, and how do you set up those
environments?
What does that look like?
You're asking the question, that we we should...
we need to set up those environments and encourage..
Well there's, first of all there's the time
setting up the day so there's time for that,
for that kind of play to happen
and it doesn't happen in a group of twenty
it happens in smaller groups
so setting up the time so lots of opportunities
for smaller groups
that may reduce the amount of time you spend
in routines, which would be a good thing for
everybody
and thinking about how to minimise the amount
of time there, and the amount of time in large
groups
forget the hour and a half or forty-five minute
circle time with everybody together, and think
more about small groups
so how you use time is one
how you set up the environment to encourage,
to nudge that kind of play along is important
paying attention to the children's interests,
yes, but also paying attention to what they're
thinking, what they're saying, what they can
do
and ensure that the environment includes physical
objects to allow that to happen
a good supply of what we call "loose parts",
either manufactured or natural materials or
junk materials
what can happen in a preschool with corks
and bottle caps can be quite amazing
and having lots and lots of those kinds of
materials, as well as other kinds of props
that will encourage the play that the children
are interested in helps too
having enough space, there's no point in having
little tiny block centres with big blocks
with three and four and five year olds
you need to have enough space to build things
and to keep the play going
often location house-keeping or socio-dramatic
area near the block play makes a lot of sense
and having easy access to those loose parts
so kids can haul them in,
having access to writing materials, so if
labels need to be made or menus need to be
made, or signs go up
there's writing materials to do it
so having all of that there, having it well
organised and not chaotic
finding out what's enough stuff and not too
much stuff is part of it, and part of that
is trial and error
but paying attention to what children do and
what they're using and what they're not using
and setting that up
then paying attention to the dynamics and
sometimes entering in to be a player and ask
some questions
maybe to help a child who needs help enter
play, so bring the child along, enter in
but that's a judgement call, and that's the
art,
the science and art of being a good educator
is knowing how much to place yourself into
it to move them along, and how much to sit
back and watch and observe
but it's not a time to sit and chat on the
bench while you have a cup of coffee
the outdoor play is another opportunity for
this to happen, and can be quite, as well
as physically active play is great outside
but there's lots of opportunities for that
kind of socio-dramatic play
again, lots of opportunities to observe and
pay attention to what the children are doing
So can we go a little bit deeper into those
three aspects?
Okay, when we talk about emotional responsiveness
we're talking about paying attention to how
children feel
to making our social environment inviting,
engaging, comfortable, and safe for the child
being really attuned when they're upset, asking
questions about it, comforting children,
paying attention to the child who comes in
and is standing back and looking hesitant
to let go of their parents hand
moving in, down at their level, eye-to-eye
contact:
"How are you?
Come see what I've got."
Being available to the child, being physically
and emotionally available to kids is a very
important part of that socio-emotional responsiveness
the other aspect of being socio-emotionally
responsive is providing guidance about what
social expectations are
by providing limits sometimes, "you can't
hit other kids"
and talking about that, and how other kids
feel, but acknowledging a child may be angry,
a child may be mad
these are honest emotions, so naming emotions,
helping a child deal with them
that's all part of being socio-emotionally
responsive
it's absolutely essential in parent-child
relationships, it's what builds secure attachments
and it's critical in early childhood settings,
as well as into the early years
by and large early childhood educators, the
research shows us, do a good job of that,
tend to be open, responsive, they might have
chosen a career direction, and they like young
kids, they enjoy being with them
so that goes a long way
the second part is about the environment itself,
the social and physical environment that we
set up for kids
and part of the environment is set up by how
we organise daily routines, how we use time
time is a big resource, and it matters what
happens from the time a child comes in the
door to when a child leaves
there's no such thing as down-time for young
kids, "and therefore we'll do our learning
at the learning circle between nine-fifteen
and ten o'clock"
that doesn't work, they're learning from the
moment they walk in to the moment they leave
so thinking about how to maximise that, and
use that full day, the full routine that are
necessary, but keeping them to a minimum
we have research that shows us kids are the
least engaged during routines, and educators
spend the most time on behaviour management
during routines
the second biggest time when kids are not
engaged and educators spend their time in
behaviour management is during large group
times
especially if we try to use large group times
for learning that not all of the children
may be ready for, or maybe things that kids
already know
large group times are good for social things,
singing songs together, clapping together,
rhymes together, games together
and can be very effective in moving from one
part of the day to another, but they're not
great for much else
so thinking about using time, so that kids
are mostly in small groups, and engaged in
small groups
is really important of how we set up the environment
and then there's how we set up the physical
environment
that's also important paying attention to
learning areas, play areas that make sense
to kids
that they can use them, where there's good
pathways and sight-lines etc.
so that's the second part, the third part
is where early childhood educators and educators
in primary schools,
research shows us, don't do as well as we
might, and that's being cognitively responsive,
that's paying attention to what and how children
are thinking
it's getting inside and figuring out what
their ideas are, to puzzling about what they're
thinking
even when children are not able to talk yet,
we can pay attention to how they engage with
the world, how they're crawling around on
the floor,
what's gaining their attention, what they're
going back to repeatedly, what distracts them
those sorts of things give us some strong clues as
to what they're thinking
as language comes on we open up a whole new
universe to understand what kids are thinking
and asking questions that are meaningful,
that challenge kids thinking, that get us
inside their heads and we can figure out what
their ideas are
asking them: "what do you think is happening
when the ant is taking the piece of sawdust
across the anthill?
What do you think is happening?
What are your ideas?"
and then paying attention to the answer, and
asking a question back
paying attention when to provide a bit of
information, and when to ask another question
that's meaningful to the child
sometimes that's called "scaffolding", where
we support learning by giving a nudge, a bit
of information, a bit of a skill, that's necessary
to get to the next level
to have an "ah-huh" moment, we call that scaffolding
within the zone of proximal development,
to use Vygotsky's theory, which is quite prevalent
amongst early childhood educators
or we can think of it as sustained shared
thinking, which has come out research in the
UK, Ed Melhuish and his colleagues, have worked
with that idea a lot
and this is the notion of having conversations
that engage children's thinking
and that you keep evolving, you keep the back
and forth going with one or two children
best with one or two children, where you're
really getting at what their thinking is,
and thinking about when to give more information,
or when to ask another question
through that the goal is to challenge the
child, but also for the child to have some
"ah-huh"s, for some learning to come out of
it
and you can recognise that, and verbalise
what the child has learned
and this can go on, sometimes those kind of
shared, sustained thinking conversations can
go on for five or ten minutes
with a lot of back and forth, particularly
if the child is very engaged and is trying
to solve a problem
so those are the three aspects, and as I said,
where I think we need to pay more attention
in the field of early childhood education,
(we need to pay attention to all three) but
where we don't do as much as we might be able
to, is on that third one: being cognitively
responsive
the research shows us, it can really propel
children's learning, cognitive, language learning
and children's understanding of scientific
concepts, figuring things out,
all can be ratcheted up if you want, and I'm
not trying to suggest that we're trying to
propel kids ahead to be grade two level when
they're four years old
that's not it at all, it's more about expanding
their horizons, and it increases their enjoyment
in what they're doing
we enjoy things more when we're just a bit
challenged
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