Sharing observations, ideas, and discoveries is important for children’s learning. Many learning situations in preschool, kindergarten and primary school start with shared direct experience that “brings the subject into the room” and democratises the learning process between the teacher and the children. In our project, we have observed that children spontaneously share their ideas and cooperate. Furthermore, we have seen how important it is for the children, to present their work to the other children.
Questions for reflection
Following the developmental framework by Borton (1970), sharing your experiences is related to asking yourself “What?” questions.
- What happened?
- What did I do?
- What did the children do?
- What was I trying to achieve?
- What was good or bad about the experiences for the children and me?
Borton (1970, p. 88) calls this “Sensing out the differences between response, actual effect, and intended effect.”
Young children will not ask those questions by themselves. Thus, it is the teacher’s task to ask them.
- What happened?
- What did you do?
- What did the automaton do?
- What were you trying to achieve?
- What was good or bad about the experiences?