Quote: "At home, children make signs using all kinds of stuff: tissue paper, kitchen roll, cardboard, and other miscellaneous bits of stuff which can be found around the home. Home...can be a place where children make meaning using a variety of different kinds of stuff.
Comment: I had never thought about my childrens' little scraps of paper with drawings and letters on them to be anything more than just drawing or creating something. On page 68 of Pahl, it is suggested that children are actually creating meaning through this type of creating. It is explained that these types of meaning-making activities were seen from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds.
Question: I wonder how we can help children in our classrooms to create meaning and "signs" while learning at school? Also, how could this idea relate to multicultural classrooms and teaching?
I loved this. Kids will try and make meaning with their creations just by human nature. But I think we can facilitate in our classrooms even more than teachers already do. At home, kids find random things to draw on, so at school, we need to have things for them as well. It may not be toilet paper, but plenty of paper needs to be available. And maybe they do find scraps --- celebrate with them! I think this is where we can really help in multicultural classrooms. We need to try and be aware of their random creations so that we can encourage them to keep doing it, showing them that they are on the right path toward writing and reading. If we get mad at them for being too preoccupied in creating on random things, we cut that creativity and innate motivation that is there, especially with multicultural classrooms.
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