Preparing the Classroom to Represent the Children in It
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As you prepare your classroom or care setting to receive and welcome new children, one of your primary objectives should be to represent the actual children and their families as authentically as possible. You can use the pictures you took on your home visit (or on the first day of school if that wasn’t possible) in a number of ways, including:
- Making or using frames and displaying each child’s picture in the classroom. Picture frames are valuable because their use conveys a “hidden curriculum” message that what is in them is important.
- Assembling a book of pictures of all the children, with a short story about each child based on information you collected in your inventories or interviews. Read it often and consider it part of your literacy curriculum. For children who are not native English speakers, provide the story in the child’s home language as well as English. If you don’t speak the child’s home language, ask the parents to help you translate or use an online text translator tool (e.g., https://translate.google.com/).
- Using a picture and the child’s printed name to label the storage place for his or her personal belongings and/or classroom work cubby.
- Starting a small scrapbook or photo album for each child and family that the child can add to as time goes on. Having their families “with them” at school can help children manage separation from their families or a difficult day.
- Making a collage of all the children’s family photos. This contributes to developing a sense of community, as it is personalized to the actual families in your class.
- Printing out the pictures of the children in “index” format (multiple small images on a single sheet of paper). Laminate them or cover them with clear contact paper so that they will be durable, and use or hide them in places around the classroom so the children will find themselves and their friends unexpectedly. For example, they can be put in the sand table, taped onto the sides of blocks, on the backs of chairs or puzzle pieces, inside lunchboxes, and so on.
- Indicating each child’s birthday with a photo on the classroom calendar.
- Putting Velcro or another fastener on the back of the child’s picture and creating a “here” and “not here” chart that the children can manage independently to announce their arrivals and departures.
- Making a matching “lotto” game using the children’s pictures. This is a game with pictures arranged in a grid and a set of individual pictures that children place on top of the matching image.
More From the Field
Critical Thinking Questions
- What cultural traditions are you most familiar with? With which cultures are you less familiar?
- Where might you begin to search for cultural resources in your local community?
“One Size Does Not Fit All”
As explained in Chapter 1, the factory model of schooling involves a “one size fits all” approach, assuming all children need or should work on the same thing at the same time, with an expected uniform mastery of skills. As some early childhood curricula in use today are designed from this perspective, it can be especially challenging to construct an individual image of each child when you are expected to deliver a curriculum for a large group. A curriculum with preprinted worksheets or workbooks and commercial artwork or graphics that represent “generic” children may or may not accurately represent the children in your class. Moreover, such activities are generally considered developmentally inappropriate for preschool-aged children (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009, p. 154). If the curriculum does not represent the children in your class, the “hidden curriculum” can confuse children when they don’t see images that depict how they view themselves, or it can contribute to construction of an “outsider” image that makes children less likely to engage with literature and activities.
In this type of circumstance teachers and caregivers can ensure the individual engagement of children by:
- Supplementing commercial curriculum materials with photos of the children from the class/group and real-life materials that represent their cultures and life experiences.
- Finding ways to connect stories and activities to experiences relevant and meaningful to the children in the class or group.
- Balancing required whole-group activities with one-on-one time for each child.
Fostering Independence
A primary goal of early childhood education is helping each child to become independent (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009). The concept of independence is obviously relative to a child’s age, environmental awareness, language facility, and physical strength. We wouldn’t assume that a 3-year-old can cross a street, bake cookies, or operate mechanical equipment safely without assistance. But there are many things we can do to guide the development of self-help skills and involve children in classroom routines that foster a sense of responsibility and an “I can do it” attitude. Furthermore, the teacher who wants to create a supportive classroom or home-care community understands that independence happens more surely and quickly with careful planning.
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