Collaboration Through Storytelling
A Show With an Audience
Recently, the children began to show us some of their shared interests and goals when they began to repeatedly work together at our puppet theater. One day, the children gathered around to watch a performance. When it was over, they applauded, and the next performer took the stage. Sometimes the performer sang a song, sometimes the performer told a joke, sometimes they did a silly little dance, but this game continued for days with no signs of stopping. We teachers tried our best to support this game by adding puppets, instruments, and audience chairs to the space, and we started to ask ourselves, “What are these children telling us?”
What are the children telling us?
There was a clear, enthusiastic, whole-group interest in this theater play. What about it is so fascinating to every one of these children?
We brainstormed.
They must be interested in performing. In telling stories and taking them in. They must be interested in the fantastical. The act of pretending. Of sharing our imaginings with one another. Let’s help.
We tried our best to support this interest by introducing an onslaught of related invitations around the program. We added instruments to our Together Time music. We built and painted a stage. We played dress up. We made stick puppets. We studied the format of a story and we wrote the “beginning, middle, and end” of one ourselves (“Waurora the Bison and The Shark”). We created a shadow puppet theater and invited the children to tell their stories there. We hosted a pretend “news station” where each child had the opportunity to share the news in our pretend TV screen. We read storybook after storybook and provided related invitations around the classroom: Were the children more interested in the jungle animal sensory bin after reading Giraffes Can’t Dance? Did they want to build hats after reading The Cat in the Hat? Honestly, the answer to these questions was a resounding, “no.” While we saw a typical level of interest in all of these ideas, none compared to the enthusiasm we observed in the children’s theater play.
Back to the drawing board
The tricky part of Emergent Curriculum for a teacher is that the emerging curriculum doesn’t always make itself as clear as you’d like. Sometimes it takes some trial and error and a real deep-dive on our part. After seeing these children work together in their theater play, we knew it was important to them. They’re learning something; they’re getting something of significant value from this play. If we can figure out what it is, we can better support it. But what is it? We chose to reflect a little on the things that were the most successful and engaging for the children, and there were two moments that stood out to us:
#1: Theater Jobs -
When we saw how intricate the theater play was becoming, we set up the whole entire yard as a theater before the children arrived. We put costumes in the dome climber and made it our dressing room/green room. we gathered multiple stages and all the chairs we could find. We created and offered name badges and labels for all of the different parts of a theater crew. The children took this idea and ran with it. Each child assumed a different job, and they had the whole operation up and running quite smoothly. They used their writing skills to make what seemed like a million paper tickets and a couple of boxes for ticket-taking, which they placed on their creative, milk crate podium. Dominic passed out the tickets, audience members brought them to Elliott at the podium where he assigned them a seat number, and Miah ushered each guest to their assigned seat before the show began. Braden would sing a little song, we’d all applaud, and we’d start over - this time with Harlowe as the performer, and so on. This play continued enthusiastically and seamlessly for days!
#2: If You Give a Pig a Party -
While the Giraffes Can’t Dance sensory bin turned out to be a dud, there was one storybook-related series of invitations that wasn’t. After reading If You Give a Pig a Party, we invited the children to create invitations and decorations. This one stuck. These children gifted each other invitations to their pretend parties over and over for days on end, and they made long paper chains to string about.
When observing and implementing Emergent Curriculum, sometimes we like to remind ourselves to “look for the verb.” (When the children are interested in playing with cars, for instance, maybe it’s not the car itself that’s so interesting. Maybe it’s pushing, pulling, steering, or spinning.)
We realized that the things that garnered the strongest enthusiasm from the children as a group involved event planning! When these children worked together to plan something big, they did so in an extremely efficient way: they assigned and assumed separate roles, and they worked together by each creating little pieces of a larger whole. Maybe it wasn’t fantastical storytelling or imagining that captured their interest, but maybe it was the function of the play itself. What were they doing? The role-assignment and strategic collaboration in a large group was something that they were clearly perfecting. They were building their understandings of how to fit into a larger community, how to work together, and how to contribute your best work to a community undertaking!
What next?
We kept the theater play available, of course, but decided to shift gears ever so slightly and focus our energy into supporting this party-planning interest they had surrounding the book. We asked questions and made lists together like, “Types of Parties” and, “What Do Parties Need?” Suddenly, the children were working together again with wonderful enthusiasm. As their ideas gained traction and started to grow, they decided to throw a party! We were so excited, and were ready to support their undertaking however we could. We asked them, “What kind of party would you like to throw?”
A tea party? Nope: a slumber party. While we couldn’t quite pull off the spending-the-night part, these kids worked together to plan a preschool “slumber party.
We, of course, decided on a dress code: pajamas.
The children decided what types of decorations they wanted: snow globes.
We needed a treat: popsicles.
We made it happen. Our Friday slumber party included a pillow fort, pajamas, and stuffed animals. Most children made their own snow globe with jars and glitter, Berkeley and Elliott used their strong writing skills to make some signage. We passed around invitations, and everyone contributed their own fantastic outfit. Everyone made their own popsicle to eat at lunchtime. These kids took on their jobs with pride and collaborated to make one awesome event. Way to go!
Continuations
While this project arc seemed to have a clear culmination in this fantastic slumber party, it’s important to us to take the knowledge we’ve gained from this journey and apply it to our work with these children as we move forward. In our invitations and provocations after our slumber party, we’ve been mindful to encourage job assignment in their play and this style of whole-group collaboration. For instance, we’ve invited them to play astronaut play, and of course, the children assumed roles quickly: who’s steering the space shuttle? Who will press the launch button?
When we invited some airplane pretend play, we were sure to bring out plenty of supplies for plenty of jobs: goggles for a pilot, luggage for passengers, and loose parts for flight attendants to help with snacks, screens, etc.
Our kiddos are truly brilliant, and we’re honored to support their hard work wherever we can. We love to see them drive their learning in such natural and independent ways. We can’t wait to learn whatever they’ll teach us next!