In the Kinder room, children have been exploring ‘expertise’ as they developed their understanding of the concept of ‘power’. Group discussions and children’s areas of interest dictated what areas of play and skill we investigated.
Ezekielle was identified as an expert runner by his fellow classmates. We tested this theory with races. We then asked Ezekielle to describe and explain his running process. We took a set of photos to depict this sequence. Ezekielle then drew pictures of the photos to help with his explanation and to clarify his thought process before verbally describing the process. This was all documented and placed in our ‘Becoming Experts’ book, which is regularly shared with others as a means of helping others develop their own skills.
Exploring ‘expertise’, led children to challenge themselves as everyone sought the title of ‘expert’. We encountered children questioning and expressing more curiosity in learning areas as they strove to improve their skills. They used a range of strategies to do this, such as peer to peer teaching, imitating others, developing discussion and so on.
Our experiments and identification of ‘expertise’ were recorded in a big book titled ‘Being Expert’. This book depicts children’s photo sequences of a skill and then an extension of this as they examined their photographs and related this to drawings that reflected the photos. Children then verbally described each movement/sequence involved so that others could use their experience as an example of how a task/skill can be performed.
Children took pride in creating this book and we would love for parents to take the opportunity to come in our room and see the book for themselves and share the experience with their children and their classmates.
Betty Razmovska,
Kindergarten Teacher
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