A Learning Moment

My job at TBS is to witness the terrific teaching and learning in the classrooms and support the teachers as they seek to deepen and expand their curricula.  In this post, I am sharing a quality moment I witnessed today, in the form of a public letter I am hereby writing to Etzim teachers Laura and Steve.

Hi Laura and Steve,

Just wanted to drop you a note to tell you how much I appreciated the experience I witnessed in your classroom today.  Not only had you all gutted the pumpkins to produce pumpkin gak as well as the pumpkin seed snack you were all enjoying, but you layered further to create really meaningful learning.

Using an iPad, you captured images of the children as they tasted the seeds, asked the children to read and interpret their friends' expressions, and then counted the votes for and against pumpkin seeds (represented by each child with a single block in a labeled basket).

As if that weren't enough, each child practiced one-to-one correspondence as you carefully counted out the votes. With your prompting, children practiced valuable mathematical language such as "more than" and less than."

A favorite early childhood education book of ours at TBS quotes an educator: "I strive for what I call at least 'three layers of value' in everything we choose to take up.  By this I mean, when our goals for children are self, community, nature, skills, and dispositions about work and play (such as risk-taking, persistence, passion, curiosity, and joy), then anything we plan must relate to at least three of these areas."

In this vein, I think they hit this one out of the park.  What were the layers involved in this experience?