Engaging Children in "the process"

One thing that I have seen becoming a reoccurring theme throughout my placement is the importance of the process and NOT the product. My teacher has been a great role model in showing me the importance of working with the children through a process versus what the outcome you finish with is. There have been many instances where my teacher and I have noticed that we plan activities and lessons so easily, referring to the activities we have already done, or the interests of the children, and we go through a process of brainstorming to get to our product. We also have learned that although we have a product to get to, the process of getting there is important to leave up to the children. It is important for them to choose their path that is most beneficial for their learning.

Therefore, discussing the product versus process, brings me to my culminating project and the commencement of it that happened this week. Briefly, my culminating project to introduce change into the classroom was a "beautiful stuff alphabet". The classroom had an alphabet up, however the children never referenced it or really noticed that it was there. So, my teacher and I brainstormed and decided that it might be beneficial to the students to make them the process of how we get an alphabet that they will use complete with words and upper and lower case letters. Therefore, we had the children each bring in a bag of "beautiful stuff" (things that parents did not need anymore, or any materials lying around the house) and we pasted all the stuff that began with each letter of the alphabet on the letters. We continued to have the children involved in each step of the process. My role now in my second semester, is to observe the children and see how they are using and accessing the alphabet as they were part of the process, making them aware of the resource they were a part of creating.

I have been observing the children and their writing and I have already been taking some notes as I have noticed more than once, the children referencing the alphabet for different reasons. Some include spelling another classmate's name, remembering which letter makes which sounds, and predominantly for the JKs, remembering how to write a certain letter. I feel a sense of pride seeing the children at the age of kindergarten, using their resources and accessing their independent skills when writing! It is exciting to be a part of a big change in the classroom and helping the children in a big part of their school work, being literacy and writing! I am looking forward to continuing to work with the children and write my observations down to hopefully prove the change that I am hoping to occur in the classroom! I will be attaching my culminating paper that I wrote last semester about the benefits of children being involved in the process as well as the changed I hope to make in the classroom!