Readers Do Make Dioramas after a Good Read...Well not exactly
dioramas, but Close...
Let me explain this rather obscure title I chose for my weekly-ish “Dear Reader “blog entry. True to form, I am presently wrestling with that slippery concept of how kids make
meaning from squiggly lines. (I do kind
of imagine me as a participant in a mud-wrestling match when I battle with this persistent and pesky question that follows
me)
If you were teaching
in the eighties, there was a saying going around admonishing teachers’ “misguided”
tendency to have kids “Do Something” to follow up or respond to something they
read with activities that could be
displayed for all to see. The "reading experts" of the day, made the (somewhat valid) point that Adults gathered
with their wine and friends for their monthly
Book Club Chat, rarely-well more like never- spontaneously and enthusiastically agree to
make a collage or a diorama to show case their thoughts and feelings about
their reading.
As a long time “Book Club Member”, I had to agree that in fact
not one of us in the twenty years of meeting to discuss books (and gossip, eat and drink) had I ever witnessed a diorama making activity.
So, being the model teacher that I was, I bowed to the ivory tower folks and obediently filed into drawer 13 my artsy/crafty-and somewhat glitzy portfolio of sample reader response options and now only offered the more mundane but appropriate "authentic responses" to literature for my students to reflect on their reading.
That was the eighties and now it is February, 2015, I am retired and engage in very important
work- picking up the grandkids after school.
The early afternoon sun was warm. The
kids asked if they could play for a while before heading home. It seems they wanted to work on their "camp". I had
nowhere I had to be, and besides I love to kid-watch. And as I watched, it hit
me that kids do like to make dioramas
about the story lines they read/hear or see. The evidence was right in front of me. Their diorama took the form of a massive "camp or base" made up of sand walls, mounds of moon rocks, bubble sand, wizards's rooms filled with pine cones, an office space-made of a heap of rather large flat rocks-"See Grandma-this is my desk" explains Jayden.
Jayden, Ari, Ethan and company are absolutely foccussed on the work of the “camp” on the Hammond Bay School playground. Chief architect, Jayden, was micro-managing
his cast of thousands (six other camp builders) to create a replica of a collaborative version of some of the elements
of Harry Potter scenes, mixed in with bits of "Judy Moody the Detective", Lego-Star Wars
and Lego Chima references. Without one single particle of man-made fluff, a whole world of rooms and secret piles was evolving and continues to evolve. New camp members come and go and there are rules to this secret society. Certain roles are taken on (Four year old Ari, was in charge of moving scoops of sand from a hole three metres from the main camp and depositing the sand in between the big boulders that where designated "office". None of it seemed logical to me. I kept wondering things like: Why is Rowan sprinting at break neck speed to the edge of the playground to fetch a pine cone when there were heaps right outside the perimeter of the sand walls, and why is Ari making countless trips to a sand depression to gather her teaspoon of sand barely contained on a flat rock?
Wisely, I did not interfere or try and add any of my incredible knowledge to the tasks or the general theme....I simply watched in awe. They were making a diorama of all the latest favourite reading activities. Through play, the kids were personalizing and transforming their learning experiences.
Now ironically enough, the academics are telling us that this is what kids do to make sense of what they read and to truly make newly learned concepts their own. I still am confused as to why the camp's carefully crafted stash of moonbombballs (sand squished with water that falls apart when you toss it at something) needed to be covered with another heap of sand, but hey, I am just a Grandma, watching the kids till Mom and Dad take over and I can go home and pour my glass of red wine.
But just a note to classroom teachers: Let them make dioramas-it's fun and it's playful and that is what matters most!
As always, in friendship,
Donna Klockars, the Book Lady
P.S. I hope to post pictures of the camp next blog. My computer is dying and challenging me every step of the way.
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