Examples of Learning Stories
When Wendy Lee first told me about Learning Stories I was struck by how deeply I was affected. Here, illuminated in such a disarming way, was what I knew was the core of learning.
My favorite stories were told from a personal view, where I was drawn in by the experience of the teller. The story, like all good stories, painted a picture. I could re-imagine the setting and characters who lived this one ordinary day and did extraordinary things. I listened as if I were sitting in the dark, watching a crackling fire.
The observer crafts a gift—a work of art—retelling what happened to them that day. The warm re-experiencing re-forms the child’s memory and encloses those who love them. Such stories, when they contain all the parts, communicate—in the clearest and most profound way—a description of what it is we do.
The Story and the Reflection
Here are examples of Learning Stories where the storyteller tries to engage the listener by narrating these events in a disarmingly personal way—re-creating that marveling of it—in a tone of gentle love.
The reflection sections afterwards include:
(1) a compassionate discussion of what makes this tale significant and the reason why, conveying a sense of how an educator is learning at the same time—phrased as if talking directly to the child(ren)
(2) a sketch of what lies in the future: what the educator might provide next for the child(ren) and for others in the school, as well as imagining the child(ren)’s future—phrased as if talking to the families and other adults
(3) the reactions of family and friends.
My first attempts were washouts. I failed to be attentive soon enough; I missed the true beginning. The other reason is harder to explain: I sounded, well, teachery. I had my own period of trials and tribulations for about a year.
If you want to see a much more nuanced source, you can visit the inventors and experts at Kei Tua o te Pae, Assessment for Learning Early Childhood Exemplars from New Zealand / Aotearoa.
Each of these nine examples can be downloaded (and freely duplicated) by clicking the link provided or clicking the photo itself.
Josie’s Drip
Josie’s drip was recorded on videotape. The camera was pointed at the entire table of children, so images were taken from the video, cropped and enlarged to focus only on her. Here is Pre-K Science for children under age 6, who, by the way, are naturally scientists.
Josies Drip
Priyankaa Draws
Priyankaa Draws, told by Sunita Bhandri, is an example of a story about a younger child photographed with a digital camera.
Priyankaa
Fragile People Play
The Fragile People Play, told by Sarah Gese at Giddens School, shows all six Passages of The Learning Frame in one story of a group of girls creating a performance from their play with dolls. I invite you to read this and see if you don’t agree that moving through all six passages is transformation. Those children are changed forever by this experience. They now view themselves as storytellers and playwrights.
FragilePeoplePlay
Riley and Mateo
Riley Visits Mateo is a story of a playdate told by Mom, Birgit Laurent, an early childhood educator. I include it to give you a glimpse into my educational program for teachers called Connecting to Children an entirely constructivist, locally conducted, year-long investigation into how one behaves with children with grace and attentiveness.
Mastery of each module is demonstrated to everyone in a Performance of Understanding, proving you can apply your learning in your life.
Understanding a topic is thinking and acting creatively and competently by solving problems and adapting old ideas to new situations. Learning can be thought of as a progressive process of presenting increasingly challenging applications as they happen in real life. —Howard Gardner
In the final module, D4, the performance challenge is to create a Learning Story that begins with children’s initiative and uses narrative documentation to tell a story specifically about either cooperation or perseverance.
RileyMateo
Henry’s Bus
Henry’s first day of moving up to the older toddler classroom becomes a Welcoming Story, told by Rob Nessly. Wendy Lee clued me into the challenge of creating a Learning Story in the first two weeks of a child’s enrollment. It is always possible to take at least one photo of each child that shows engagement, the second passage.
Henry
Joy with the Marble Run
Joy with the Marble Run, in English, or Alegría con la ejecución de Mármol , in Español, highlights cooperative action, the kind of story when retold to the class helps develop a cooperative democratic cooperativa y democrática culture in the school, one of the topics covered elsewhere here.
Stories of altruism or cooperation, like this one, can be used in group times to create a shared expectation that play is more fun when we respond positively to other’s ideas and build on their contributions.
Marble Run
Marmol
The Puppy Bed
Continuing with the idea that Learning Stories can be used to create a culture where children discover they are members of a community, no longer being alone. Carrie Portrie’s story captures kindness, care, and belonging for everyone to see and become able to understand. Grabbing her camera when she saw what the children were doing, she captured what happened in her child care program and wrote a story that she could share with everyone.
The Puppy Bed
Sascha and the Mirror
Here is an example of the steps in writing a story from the bare bones of photos and notes. Emilly Hillsten Kays captured these records when Sascha, a five-year-old, was playing one morning with pattern blocks on mats of black felt.
As a result we can all examine her five photos and what Sascha said—the documentation.
What shall we do with them?
Shall we keep them in a computer file?
Shall we show the images to somebody?
Shall we keep them in a file or notebook as evidence for officials?
Shall we simply email the pictures to his family?
Shall we gather a group together to figure out what story they tell?
Learning to See by Mary Jane Drummond (1994, p 13)
When we work with children, when we play and experiment and talk with them, when we watch them and everything they do, we are witnessing a fascinating and inspiring process: we are seeing them learn.
As we think about what we see, and try to understand it, we have embarked on the process that in this book I am calling ‘assessment’. I am using the term to describe the ways in which, in our everyday practice, we observe children’s learning, strive to understand it, and then put our understanding to good use.
Here we have Emilly’s unprocessed data—evidence of a physical reality of Sascha at one moment one morning. If we follow Mary Jane Drummond’s suggestions, we have work to do.
To make this into ‘assessment’ we take what we see, strive to understand it, and then put that understanding to good use.
Linked below is how we built a Learning Story around these pieces. We had to talk with each other to find the deeper stuff, and then try to write, in an engaging way, a story people wanted to read, that had immediate value and could be read again and again onward into the future.
We probably learned more than Sascha did. You can see how that happened by opening this story.
Sascha Pattern Blocks
Jolene Brushes Paint
Below are three resources for people to write their own learning story of Jolene at the easel. After watching the video multiple times, people can write on pages that have printed images of Jolene. They can compare their versions and possibly work together in teams to pull the best ideas together to make a cooperative story, which can then be shared with others. After! that sharing people can read the Learning Story Tom and Holly wrote that Jolene took home to her family.
- 1′ 42 second Video of Jolene painting (below) which you can download from VIMEO,
- Link to a PDF file to use with the video, JoleneBlank (four pictures per page without text), for workshop participants to try their hand at writing a Learning Story after watching the video over and over again.
- Learning Story which you can also download Jolene Brushes Paint, provides the “answers” to the JoleneBlank exercise, which aren’t really answers. The Learning Story Holly and I created together is what we sent home with the child. It represents as completely as possible our perspectives from years of experience with tempera, knowing Jolene, and knowing her family. This is a unique story at a unique time by unique people, which could never be replicated by anyone else. Jolene, by the way, loves squirrels.
We all get to write from our unique perspectives; when combined with the perspectives of others, we become more careful observers and more capable authors.