Valuing community, we include children in many opportunities to contribute to our whole school. For example, some West Wingers worked on assembling stools for the Atelier and last week a few East Wingers volunteered to paint our yellow caution line near the alley door. This group went a step further and wanted to leave a written message for the children and for the adults.
Julien: We need to paint it and say, ‘Wait behind the line.’
Sammy: ‘Because we don’t want it to slam you because it will hurt.’
Miles: Say, ‘When you drop off your kids, make sure no one goes on the other side.’
These meaningful moments also offer teachers opportunities to observe children’s abilities within an authentic context. We noticed these children shared their diverse strengths and challenges in fine motor, letter recognition, phonetic understanding, recognizing that a space between groups of letters defines a word, and that English is read from left to right. Observations like these guide us in developing goals for each child as well as the whole group. -Atelierista Cindy
Enter the password: “venice1987” for the video below.
The Yellow Line from NSW Documentation on Vimeo.
