Before building staircases in the block area, I asked:
"What do you think about in order to build a staricase?"
Caleb: "They're like mountains. You have to think about going higher and higher."
Ruby: "You have to think about how to make it balance so it's strong."
Aliyah: "They're not flat. You have to make it a little big, then a little bigger."
Grace: "Up, up, up, up..."
Caleb: "... the stairs get higher."
Ruby begins by stacking the blocks off-set on top of each other, but they can not stand on their own. She then tries a different approach.
I identify: "Ruby, I noticed that you changed your plan."
She explains: "It was too hard to balance that way. There's nothing on the bottom to hold it up. I looked at Caleb's and Grace's to figure out a new idea."
While Ruby is building her house, she notices a problem.
"I made it [the house] too high."
She continues to work to solve the problem, turning blocks different ways to make the floor of the house level with the top stair. Once this problem is solved, she continues to build the walls.
During her rebuilding, she realizes, "There's a problem... there were no more little rectangle blocks but then I saw the colored rectangle and it fit."
Grace has built her staircase and is building the house in front of the first step.
I signal: "Grace, let's look where your stairs lead. Let's pretend to go up them. Up, up, up, up... uh, oh!"
Grace notices: "The house needs to go at the other end. [She moves her house to the other end, but it is shorter than the top stair.] The stairs are too high. I don't know what to do."
Caleb suggests: "You can make the house taller." [He gets some blocks and adds them so the floor of the house is level with the top stair.]
Grace notices: "You made the house higher. Now it does work."
Aliyah is building her staircase. She remarks: "It's too big."
I ask: "I wonder what you can do to solve that problem?"
She examines: "I took some blocks away. Some steps were too high. You need one block, then two, then three, then four, then five blocks. Like four comes before five."
Aliyah is building up walls. When she goes to place floor boards over them, she makes a discovery. She notices: "It's too tall. I have to take one down. The floor is too high."
I query: "How might you get it lower?"
After turning the top blocks on their wider sides, she explains: "I laid the block down. Now it's the same inch as the steps!"
While relizing that the walls go completely around the house, I relate: "Aliyah, how do you get into your house?"
Aliyah responds: "Up the stairs."
I continue: "Pretend to go up your stairs."
She realizes: "I have to move this [the wall at the top of the stairs] and the door goes here."
Ben exclaims: "I think I'm done."
I ask: "Pretend to go up the stairs to get into your house."
Ben realizes: "They'll fall down into the house."
I ask: "What can you do to solve that problem?"
Be realizes: "I could make a slide to slide into the house."
I wonder: "That's one way to solve the problem, but then you don't really need stairs. You could have the door down on the floor."
Ben's walls keep falling down. Isabel suggests: "Ben, turn the blocks flat. It's stronger."
He turns the blocks comprising the wall on their wider side.
I wonder: "You had a few problems building that house. What did you learn when you solved those problems?"
Ben replies: "You have to make the walls strong so they don't fall over. You put them on the wide side. You have to make the floor higher, so its at the top of the stairs."
Most of the children engaged in problem solving either around making stairs and/or the placement of the building once the stairs were complete. Many children started making the building in front of the lowest step while others made it at the end of the tallest step but made it down on the carpet so people would have to jump down from the tallest step into the building. Some children built the building around the stairs and then some discussion ensued about whether the stairs were inside or outside the building. Some children's stairs ended up inside the building and other's were outside. The trickiest part seemed to be how to build the floor where the stairs led whether inside or out.
In order to get the floor level with the top stair, some children built a solid foundation piling blocks on top of one another to make a big solid rectangle that was the right height. Other children built the outer walls of a foundation and made them tall enough to reach the top stair and then laid a floor board over this, thus creating a basement space. One child built his building in front of the lowest step. When he realized his mistake, he was going to move the building around to the tallest step but decided on a different plan. He made another staircase that led up to his tallest step, thus creating an up, then down staircase that led into his building. While building, one child realized that the blocks are not as sturdy when placed on their narrow side and thus changed them to lay on their wide side.
While the children were building and problem solving, they were pretty absorbed in their own efforts. There was some interaction among the children to help each other problem solve. When Ben's building kept falling over, Isabel who discovered that the blocks are sturdier when placed on their wide side, shared this information. Ben took Isabel's advice and it worked. Ruby, who was having difficulty building stairs, observed her peers to get new ideas. When Grace couldn't figure out how to make the first floor level with the top step, Caleb offered to help her solve the problem.
Ellen: "How would you get into the basement?"
Aliyah: "I need a door... I have a basement and two doors. One door goes to the basement, one door goes to the house, the first floor."
Preschoolers build on the floor when playing in our block area. This activity challenged their sense of spatial relationships. To me, it was fascinating to see that the main challenges that emerged were:
(I should note here that additional private documentation was written regarding the children's problem solving skills, particularly their ability to persist in the face of a challenge and generate and try out multiple solutions.)
Documentation As Building Blocks For New Learning
How does documentation benefit children with different learning styles and needs? How can it be modified to address these differences?
- For most of the children, reviewing this documentation and being able to keep multiple perspectives in mind to inform a new plan, proved very beneficial.
- But, this documentation did not benefit a child with special needs who requires more explicit teaching, and less visual and more kinesthetic input.
Would I do this kind of documentation again, even though it was a lot of work?
- Yes! The documentation serves as a pedagogical tool with content generated by the children, organized by the teacher and reviewed collaboratively to provoke learning. I have used documentation, in different forms, to accompany many different processes/ projects/activities with rich results. I have found that reviewing documentation with the children enhances reflection and planning skills, creative and critical thinking, and problem solving. It also deepens my understanding of the children's learning and skills.
As a result of this process, would children spontaneously begin to incorporate staircases into their block building in general?
Yes, this proved to be the case with many of the children.
