Recently we found that there was a lot of interest in the shark song. Everyone wanted to sing it, strum it, shout it! So we invited children to draw and tell their shark stories. There was lots of wonderful discussion - some real tales of shark stories and some hilariously creative ones. From these elaborate stories the children were keen to create art pieces reflecting their ideas. These ideas and stories were recorded for them.
“Students engage in various discourse forms relating to informing, narrating, inquiring, arguing, persuading and entertaining to make their ideas understandable and even memorable” (Labbo, Reinking &McKenna, 1998).
The interest in sharks continued over a number of weeks and tamariki progressed their interest further into the playground ..... But it continued to return back to art pieces.
"Young children have increasing capacities for lanugage and inquiry, increasing ability to understand another point of view, and are developing interests in representation and symbols such as pictures, numbers and words. The children's increasing abilities to plan and monitor their activities are evident in their developing awareness of themselves as learners" (MoE, 1996).
The tamariki loved their creations and together we shared and talked about the sharks...we decided to bring their images to life using the ipad.
“It has long been known that information and communication technologies (ICT’s) have the propensity to increase children's motivation, interest and engagement in literacy and language learning” (McCarrick & Xiaming, 2007).
The opportunity to make a movie, to illustrate it and narrate it all by themselves appealed to many of the children. It was a long process and it took a great deal of patience and understanding to make it through to the finished product.
"Young children's greater working memory contributes to their capacity for telling stories, for more complex problem-solving strategies, for longer periods of focussed attention, and for more persistent curiosity" (MoE, 1996).
Once we started more and more children noticed what was happening and wanted to be involved. Beginning the process with the creation of their sharks and other characters.
“In many respects New Zealand early childhood education is no stranger to the idea that learning of any kind involves a complex interplay of knowledge, skills and learning dispositions and that it may in fact be the dispositions that are the most powerful trigger for learning success “ (Carr, 2001).
Then we began the process of creating the story....
And here is a collection of the stories produced by the children!
