I recently made a reel on the topic of pulling children for small groups that received a lot of feedback. You can view it on Instagram or on YouTube. Child-led play is essential to learning. If we encourage children to guide their play, we find they actually challenge themselves more than we would and they are more persistent to finish a task because it is more satisfying for them to complete something of their own choosing rather than ours. So why do we interrupt for small groups? And this is not saying that small groups are not needed, but rather, can we find a more ideal time to conduct them? What do you think? Answer the poll below.
why do we pull children from play for small group instruction?
0%it is the only time possible do to lack of support
0%our program curriculum requires doing it at this time
0%child-led play is never interupted in our program
“In order to maximize the benefits of free, child-led play time, children should not be pulled from their play time for a teacher-conducted small group activity. It is counterproductive. If children are guiding their own play, they are: building curiosity, hypothesizing, figuring things out, increasing their attention spans, and, most importantly, they are learning! It does not make sense to remove children from play for an activity we, the stakeholders, or the predetermined curriculum deem important.” ~ Stacy Benge, The Whole Child Alphabet: How Young Children Actually Develop Literacy
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