Among Young Learners
Another aspect of my studies in ED800 concerned how the very youngest of learners process information that will later become the very foundation of their academic experience. In reviewing required class literature, we were asked to identify where and how kindergarten students began showing the rudiments of academic understanding.
The most compelling aspect of the assignment was discovering that most of the young children's academic awakenings occurred during periods of either free play or free association (in conversation, writing or drawing) after a classroom lesson. This showed that the rudiments of understanding begin in imagination, and not necessarily in structured classroom assignments.
The assignment, which is linked below, also explores how the close structure of a kindergarten classroom distributes one child's breakthrough to other children, who cannot help but to benefit from their peer's outburst of creativity.