Listening - what does this mean?

"We have always maintained that children have their own questions and theories, and that they negotiate the theories with others. Our duties as teachers is to listen to the children, just as we ask them to listen to one another. Listening means giving value to others, being open to them and what they have to say. Listening legitimizes the other person's point of view, thereby enriching both the listener and the speaker. What teachers are asked to do is create contexts where such listening can take place."
                                                              Carla Rinaldi cited in Edwards, Gandini and Forman (1998)

How do we authentically listen to children?

Listening is not just about listening with your ears, it is about listening with all of your senses. Through listening with all of your senses you will be able to discover provocations for projects and direction in existing projects. Listening with all your senses is not easy. There are many things that stand in the way of authentically listening to children, for example, your values, pre-conceived ideas, assumptions, biases, 'rules' etc etc Listening is not about producing answers for children, rather it formulates more questions. These things challenge us when we try to listen to children.

I recently listened to a presentation by a fellow educator who felt challenged by what the children were 'telling' her. A group of boys in her group loved the cartoon character, Ben 10, they would bring in small figurines and re-inact the cartoon in the classroom. At first she tried to resist this interest and stop the play through 'rules'. Then she realised that the children valued this play and that she wasn't really listening to them. Based on this realisation she changed her tact and embraced this play, encouraging the boys to draw pictures, create sets and props using clay and cardboard, and re-inact the story lines. This developed into a project for the children.

I see my role as an educator to listen, recognise, support, challenge, extend children's thinking and theories by creating an environment where this is valued.

2012 Project - An investigation into Roundness

In this post I would like to give some background as to how this project and investigation into 'roundness' evolved.

In term 2 the Junior School were given the directive to produce a school show. The theme for the show was the 'Olympics' as it was topical at the time. Each class was asked to choose a country and to produce a dance item that reflected their culture of their country of choice.

I decided that our class would choose China as our country. I spent sometime researching on the internet about Chinese classical dance. Dance is not a strength of mine so I really wanted to find out what sort of movements they used in Chinese classical dance. In the course of my research I came across the Shen Yun which had a short promotional video. The company had interviewed dancers and had asked them to explain the underlying principles of Chinese classical dance. One of the concepts in Classical Chinese Dance that stood out to me was that of the roundness of movements, as opposed to ballet where the movements are quite straight.

Because I believe in child centered learning and that they are capable learners, I wanted the children to be involved as much as possible in the process of choreographing the dance. I decided this concept of roundness would provide an excellent foundation for our dance.

Over the term we explored this concept of roundness through a variety of ways including visual art, language, construction, and of course dance!

In visual art we looked at the artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. The children created their own Hundertwasser inspired art.

We used wire, pebbles and the OHP to explore the question ‘What is a line?’ We built up a visual concept of ‘roundness’ the children so the could start thinking about demonstrating 'roundness' with their bodies.

Through our exploration of roundness the children began building a bank of rich descriptive words such as; swirly, twirly, bumpy, wiggly, spirally, twisty, squiggly, jiggly to describe the movement of their bodies.

The children had been watching alot of the Olypmic games at home and so these conversations flowed into the classroom. Some of them where aware that the Olympics were in London which the children were keen to locate on a map. Other children in the class had travelled recently and were also aware of where they had been. This sparked an investigation into maps. I found various types of maps for the children to look at for example a map of the world, a map of New Zealand and a map of Auckland. This led to discussions about perspective and a 'bird's eye view'.

 I organised the children into 3 groups and they had to collaboratively choreograph their dance and then record these movements from a bird's eye view. Some of the children found it challenging and frustrating to work in a group to design their dance, so there was alot of negotiating and problem solving that we as teachers supported the children through.