Individual Interests

As Dr. Deborah Rowe points out her podcast "The Role of Interest and Agency for Written Expression Among Preschoolers," even among two-to-three-year-olds, there are four main groups into which a child's interests roughly fall:  socially oriented, procedural, creative, or conceptually oriented.  When a child is socially oriented, s/he most enjoys relating with others, and--writing-wise--ends up being the most varied because they are flexible in order to do whatever their friends are doing; drama is a particularly effective way to engage these individuals in literacy.  Procedurally oriented children like to do things the right way, and may even practice writing letters on their own, for the pure pleasure of seeing neat rows of nice lettering lining up nicely.  Creative kids discover new uses for items and procedures and are the most likely to experiment, in writing and otherwise; using pretending/roleplaying is a fun way to get them into writing.  Conceptually oriented students are those who have a burning passion for something.  You know you're working with one of these children when you can say, "Jimmy is all about dinosaurs.  He's our resident expert."  These students see mark-making as a way to record their ideas, and science inquiry is often a great way to engage them in literacy activities.

How do these distinctions help parents and teachers?  Knowing the child you're working with and figuring out what makes him/her tick, giggle, and focus is always helpful.  While all individuals engage in each of the four interest groups at some time or another, we all have preferences.  When I'm presented with something to organize, I can sometimes get a little giddy:  my brain works procedurally and loves the opportunity to sit in a corner with a knot to untie or a stack of books to shelve in a library; yet if given the choice, I'll generally choose to sit and chat with a friend or family member even over that strong draw, because even more so, I'm  socially oriented.  Given a chance to read something new and talk it over with a partner or in a small group, I'm a pretty happy camper.  But sometimes I get a little lost when I'm asked to inhabit conceptual-land...it's a place where I often feel I'm in a little over my head.  Knowing that children feel this way--and figuring out the aspects with which they're comfortable and those which make them a little uneasy--makes learning how to engage them in literacy learning a little bit easier.

Literacy Dig: PetCo's Learning Environment

We chose PetCo for the location of this literacy dig as a place that would have some specialized language and would be likely to have different people coming and going, as well as having several different sorts of writing displayed.  For this project, I was in charge of eavesdropping--that is, observing and recording bits of talk--and looking out for what people said to each other, who was saying what, and the routine ways of talking in the location.  For most of the time, I didn't hear much conversation happening.  The store wasn't particularly busy, and when people came in alone, they were not prone to talking.  Those who came in as a part of a group were more likely to talk, generally to comment on how cute the animals were or to discuss products.  Something that complicated my attempts to listen were that several of the customers weren't speaking English, so I had to rely on facial expressions and body language (as well as the focus of their attention) to guess what they were discussing.  I did hear one conversation in which a man asked the woman with him if she had ever seen a sleeping turtle, after which they checked out the turtle cages.  I also overheard pieces of a conversation between an employee getting off work and one starting a shift; they were discussing what needed to be done, as well as shipping dates and what was in stock.  I also heard employees greeting customers and checking whether they were finding everything alright.  The cashier, upon finishing a transaction, told the customer to "Have a good day."

But it wasn't until near the end of my observation period that I hit gold.  A grandmother came in with two of her grandchildren, one infant girl and one boy probably around 3 years old.  The little boy immediately noticed that some of the fish tanks were empty.  Then they talked about the cats and the grandma pointed out the dogs.  They discussed things that you can do with pet dogs, like playing fetch.  But what was really great was the conversation the grandma had about the aquarium area.  She pointed out to her grandson that the signs under each tank tell you what kind of fish is in it and what kind of habitat and care it needs.  I loved how she took the opportunity to draw attention to how information was presented to her young charge, even though he couldn't read it yet.  After hearing this exchange, I read Rebecca Powell and Nancy Davidson's (2005) article "The Donut House:  Real World Literacy in an Urban Kindergarten Classroom" (Language Arts, 82(5), 248-256), and I was even more blown away by how powerful the kind of conversation that this grandmother was having with her grandson is.  Powell and Davidson talk about how having topics of study about which children naturally want to learn is really helpful in terms of student engagement and intrinsic motivation, and this was certainly something that interested this little boy, since even before going to the fuzzy critters, he noticed the absence of fish in some tanks and checked out the fish as his grandmother situated the little girl in their cart.  As Dr. Keller pointed out in my social studies methods course yesterday, children experience "sensitive periods" during which they have keen, focused attention on certain areas, but then then their learning is accomplished and they move onto the next thing.  This little boy seemed to be pretty keen on fish, and his grandmother definitely tapped into that interest to create a teachable moment about what writing can tell you and where to locate information.

How to Get Your Six-Year-Old Engaged

 Don't worry, I'm not recommending that you walk your Kindergarten son or daughter down the aisle, I'm simply saying that engagement with what's going on around them is key for students.  As Brian Cambourne (1995) pointed out, "It didn't matter how much immersion in text and language we provided; it didn't matter how riveting, compelling, exciting, or motivating our demonstrations were; if students didn't engage with language, no learning could occur" ("Toward an Educationally Relevant Theory" in The Reading Teacher, 49 (3), p. 186).  In order to make meaningful connections with the texts that students encounter in their daily lives, they have to first be encountering things that interest them and with which they can identify on some level.  When teachers and parents take the time and effort to be good readers of books that capture the attention of the children with whom they're sharing literature, it makes a difference in the lives of those children.  As one teacher's former student shared with her, "When I read aloud to my kids before bed, it's your voice I hear in my head" (Bernice Cullinan quoted in Johnson & Keier, Catching Readers Before They Fall, 2005, ch. 6).  Furthermore, when we make learning fun, we can sneak it in there and before our kids and students know it, they've picked up something new painlessly and effortlessly, and hopefully have been giggling all the while.  One often-effective way to do this is to use a lot of community-based activities:  have kids read and write together (with parents, siblings, friends, peers) and ask them to discuss what they're hearing when you read aloud.  Children naturally want to try things out, and they want to share what they're discovering and thinking about, so encourage them in these pursuits by providing them with opportunities to explore and to experience appropriate literature and through careful question-asking and interest in what they're learning.