“We are conscious of ourselves because we are conscious of others; and in an analogous manner, we are conscious of others because in our relationship to ourselves we are the same as others in their relationship to us. I am aware of myself only to the extent that I am as another for myself.”
― Lev S. Vygotsky
In a mixed age preschool, children vary from young 2 and 3 year-olds all the way up to 5+ The abilities and development of this wide age range can vary drastically. When young children enter our classroom, they come with their own set of strengths and areas for growth. They meet a community of peers who also vary in their own strengths. For the younger children, they are able to see more advanced strategies: for working, playing, communicating and solving problems. They are able to observe, try out and adopt these strategies.
We can see many examples of this benefitting the younger children. Harry watches Clark peel his orange and pinches his fingers in the same way then celebrating his success. The next time we have oranges, Harry has a go-to strategy to solve the problem! Emilio loves letters and watches Selah write carefully. She narrates her process for him, creating a warm social and language interaction around a shared interest, adding to his strategies for conversing with peers and engaging in back and forth social play. Young children can often better understand new ideas and concepts when they learn it from a similarly aged peer. This is because the two children are closer in their zones of proximal knowledge, the space between what they can currently do independently and what they can do with assistance. The older child remembers recently how they acquired their knowledge and can describe strategies that are better suited for their peer.
Knowledge that is acquired through social interactions is best for long term knowledge retention and better understanding. When we learn something, we make stronger connections in our brain cells or neurons. Learning through social interaction and play connects the neurons with more myelin- a substance which protects the neurons from decay and makes the connections pass electricity more quickly. So when children learn in social way, it makes that learning stronger, long lasting and more quickly accessible.
Mixed age classrooms also benefit the children that are older and have more advanced skills. When an older child slows down and describes their ideas and shows another child how they do something, it allows that child to better understand their ideas, solidifying their knowledge. To teach a peer, they must connect many areas of their brain to explain their learning to another: the language areas of their brain to describe their thinking, the memory storage areas of their brain to recall how they originally acquired that learning and the problems they had to solve to along the way, they have to use the higher order parts of the brain to plan and organize what are the the most important elements to pass along and what will be the most helpful things to share.
The neurons connecting these different areas of the brain are less defined in younger children and the more frequently children engage in activities that use many areas of the brain, the more defined those neurons become. Think of it like a small hiking path, the more it is used over time, the more defined it becomes eventually becoming like a well paved road. Children’s brains are doing this work in preschool, at first learning the ways down the path, and over time defining those neural pathways until they are strong. We support children’s learning in a mixed age classroom by facilitating peer interactions. Frequently when children ask us for help, we can direct them to a friend that is an expert in that area, benefiting the brain development of both children.
Comments