Examples of Learning Stories
These examples use the convention I adopted to craft the final product. In this form, the story teller spins a tale of an event from a novelist’s perspective (with maybe a bit of loving bias sprinkled in). The afterwards sections include (1) an attentive and compassionate discussion of meaning from the educator’s experience, told directly to the child(ren), and (2) possibilities in the child(ren)’s future and for the school, voiced to these communities.
If you want to see the ultimate, much more nuanced source, I invite you to go to Kei Tua o te Pae, Assessment for Learning Early Childhood Exemplars from New Zealand / Aotearoa.
Each of these eight examples can be downloaded by clicking the link provided below the photo.
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 at the most fundamental level.
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.
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
Sascha and the Mirror
Here is an example of building a story from documentation. Emilly Hillsten Kays took 5 photos and took notes of what the child said one morning when Sascha, a five-year-old, played with pattern blocks. We have choices to make in what we do with that documentation.
Linked below is the Learning Story we built. We use these observable facts that Emilly saw and heard to tell a true tale about Sascha, an engaging story with value now and onward into the future.
Emilly and Tom discussed this event, co-constructed the meanings we each added, and wrote a Learning Story to be read again and again to discover the long term significance of this one event of daily life.
We discovered, too, how play materials communicate in ways that convey more than words can say. The Pattern Blocks not only spoke of Disney’s The Lion King they offered abstractions and beauty. We witnessed a fascinating an inspiring process.
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.
Emilly collected unprocessed data—evidence of a physical reality of Sascha at one moment one morning. To make that ‘assessment’ we take what we see, strive to understand it, and then put that understanding to good use.
How do we put these photos and statements to good use?
Shall we keep them in a computer file?
Shall we show them casually to someone?
Shall we put them in a file or notebook as evidence for government officials?
Shall we email the pictures to his family?
Shall we put our heads together to write a Learning 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.