Examples of Learning Stories
When Wendy Lee first shared her exemplars of Learning Stories, I was struck by how such simple stories could convey such deep truth in such a touching way. They affirmed human nature and candidly expressed my enchantment with children.
My favorite ones conveyed a personal, involved point of view; I could see their thoughts. I felt their honesty.
Truly. A well-crafted Learning Story is a work of art—a gift and a glimpse—reanimating one moment in a lifetime of moments. A Learning Story expands the child’s awareness of how others see them and embraces us with love.
When filled in with reflections and plans, the story highlights the joys of emergence—a child becoming themselves—in a context of care. It communicates in the most profound way what teachers see when they are with our children.
The Story and the Reflection
Below are 8 of these reanimation tales, which I selected to display a range of purposes for taking the time to write them. Each starts with the emergence of what the narrator valued from their life experience of many children, and each includes well-suited images and a well-chosen title.
After the tale is told, a reflection section shares the educator’s work.
- meaning: a compassionate discussion of what makes this tale significant to us, who gathered to examine it closely, explaining our reasons and personal views, and demonstrating how the educators are learning as well—phrased directly to the child(ren)
- what we can do and imagine: what the educator might build from this, as well as imagining the future, months or years away—phrased directly to the adults working with this child, the family, other educators, and story times for a river of children
- family additions: the reactions, thoughts, and comments of those close to the child(ren).
I must admit that my first attempts weren’t so good. I often came in too late to begin at the true beginning, and, unfortunately, I sounded rather stiff, not truly me. I realized how important this was, so I endeavored to look more in anticipation of something to happen and referred to others to keep me true.
If you want to see a more nuanced source, you can visit the inventors, experts, and extraordinary teachers at Kei Tua o te Pae, Assessment for Learning Early Childhood Exemplars from New Zealand / Aotearoa.
Each of these 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
The adults decided these were consequential events to photograph and to write about—their chosen values at work for children’s long-term benefit. Here is a quote from Mary Jane Drummond’s book Learning to See, which Margaret Carr noted well.
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 the theme that Learning Stories create a culture where children discover community, Carrie Portrie’s Puppy Bed brings forward the Value of Belonging for everyone. Because she pointed her camera at cooperation, she write a story of kindness and courtesy to share with everyone. These are the stories the world needs to hear.
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
Challenges to Understanding
I mentioned in the beginning that I chose these stories as examples of different intentions in writing them. I am wondering if people can identify what those intentions might have been.
- Josie’s Drip
- Priyankaa Draws
- Fragile People Play
- Riley and Mateo
- Henry’s Bus
- Joy with the Marble Run
- The Puppy Bed
- Sascha and the Mirror
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.
Jolene Brushes Paint
- 1′ 42 second Video of Jolene painting, which you can play here or download at VIMEO,
- PDF “Exercise” to use with the video, (four pictures per page without text), so people can try their hand at writing a Learning Story—after watching the video over and over again—the best way to learn.
- a completed Learning Story by Tom and Holly: Jolene Brushes Paint, provides the “answers” to the Jolene Blank exercise, which are NOT REALLY ANSWERS. Hello!
The Learning Story Holly and I created together is what we sent home with the child. We present our reality. We present our combined perspectives, based on years of experience with children, recording and writing learning stories, thousands of hours of watching children, presenting painting to children, as well as Holly’s personal relationship with Jolene and her family. What you see here is us, which can’t be you. We told a unique story at a unique time for unique people. Jolene, by the way, loves squirrels.
Each person will always write from one perspective. It’s aways best when we get to combine our perspectives and amplify our insights—the great joy enabled by Learning Stories. Together, we become more careful observers and more capable teachers.
Video
Exercise
Jolene Blank
Slides of Tom and Holly’s Story
(view after Exercise “Jolene Blank” completed)
