Communicating About Collections

Peggy Ashbrook

Children love to collect all kinds of things, from sticks to colorful leaves to trading cards. These objects are special to children because they found the objects and chose them for a quality determined by them. For preschool students, the quality could be shape, a certain feel in the hand, color, or even just being close at hand. Exploring the qualities of a collection can be an engaging experience that builds on prior learning while introducing or practicing such skills as asking questions, comparing, sorting, counting, describing, developing understanding of the objects, and communicating about the investigations, all part of doing scientific inquiry as defined by the National Science Education Standards for grades K–4.

Working with a collection in a scientific way encourages children to evaluate the items in the collection and use higher-order thinking skills while learning knowledge and vocabulary—valuable skills for becoming successful readers (Neuman 2005). Students’ delight in collections encourages interest in understanding and using text—to learn about their collections and share it with others.

Bring books into the classroom to inspire collecting. Reading aloud a few pages of nonfiction books on the subject of a collection, such as shells, teaches both vocabulary and scientific content without overwhelming young children’s attention spans. Although some first and second graders can read about the subject of their collection themselves, research has shown that reading aloud to children on a frequent basis is one of the most important activities for developing early literacy (Green 2006).?Reading aloud helps build basic learning readiness skills of focused listening and lengthened attention span as it “provides children with opportunities to refine language comprehension skills, exercise visual focus, and build basic knowledge” (Blaustein 2005).Reading aloud to the class also gives a shared knowledge base for class discussions.

Displaying a collection gives students places to put text and a reason for it—describing a collection, labeling names of rocks or minerals and describing where they were collected, or posting the names of the different life stages of a beetle (larva, pupa, adult beetle). This use of text is appropriate in early childhood care centers and preschools where normally there is great variation in developing literacy and in elementary schools, where it is hoped that all students will pass standardized reading tests.

A collection does not have to be of specimens purchased or taken from nature to support the goals of reading about the collected items, investigating them, and writing about them. A collection can be made of pictures cut from the newspaper or magazines and then sorted into categories such as “capital letters” and “lowercase letters,” “things that are alive” and “things that are not alive,” or “food from trees” and “food from grasses.” The following activity uses items that are usually discarded, such as bottle lids or envelopes, to begin a collection.

Resources

Blaustein, M. 2005. See, hear, touch! The basics of learning readiness. Beyond the Journal, Young Children on the Web (July)
www.journal.naeyc.org/btj/200507/01Blaustein.pdf.

Green, S.D., R. Peterson, and J.R. Lewis. 2006. Language and literacy promotion in early childhood settings: A survey of center-based practices. Early Childhood Research and Practice 8(1): http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v8n1/green.html.

Neuman, S.B., and K. Roskos. 2005. Whatever happened to developmentally appropriate practice in early literacy? Beyond the Journal, Young Children on the Web (July)
www.journal.naeyc.org/btj/200507/02Neuman.pdf.

Sorting Caps

Objective:

Photograph courtesy of the author

To provide a meaningful activity to support early literacy and science learning.

Materials:

• Any collection of similar items, such as stamps, rocks, model cars, leaves, buttons, insects, envelopes, letters cut from a newspaper, and bottle lids.
• Writing materials for describing and labeling
• Books about the items

Procedure:

1. Introduce the idea of a collection with an example from the school’s science supplies or by reading aloud a book that includes a collection, such as Hannah’s Collections (Jocelyn 2000) or Can You See What I See? Cool Collections (Wick 2004).
2. Focus the class on one collection to add to—either exploring an existing collection or starting a new one (bottle lids make a good choice).
3. As students bring in items, have them assign the item a number and write down on some kind of an entry form a description including the type, color, size (diameter measurement or relative size), any special features, and where they collected it.
4. Use a permanent marker or sticker to attach the collection number to the item and then put the item into a box or tray.
5. After the items have been collected, have each student sort the items (such as lids) in the collection according to groupings they determine. This could be done over a week, individually or in small groups. Color is often the first attribute that students sort by. Other categories include size, screw-on or snap-on, type of container (water, soda, or sports drink bottles, ketchup bottle, mayonnaise jar, or milk jug), and one-piece or flip-top.
6. Students should describe the categories they chose to sort the items by using words or labeled drawings before returning the items to the box.
7. Hold a discussion about the collection and the categories used by individual students and ask the class to agree on a single set of categories for display purposes. Have the students prepare the collection for display in a school hallway or library to share with other students by labeling the collection, the groupings, and the individual items. Groups of bottle lids can be hot-glued (by the teacher) to poster board or bagged together in clear plastic bags for display. Include a “guest book” in the display for viewers to record their names and comments.
8. Share the fun by lending the collection to another class or inviting the school to add to it.

It is convenient to begin with a collection of human-made items but students should also work with a collection of natural items to build knowledge about the natural world. Establishing and maintaining a collection can be a lifelong activity. Finding a purpose in and passion for collecting does not end with adulthood, as evidenced by the existence of museums, collectors’ conventions, and the National Association of Collectors.

Resources

Jocelyn, M. 2000. Hannah’s collections. New York: Dutton.

Wick, W. 2004. Can you see what I see? Cool collections: Picture puzzles to search and solve. New York: Scholastic.

Peggy Ashbrook (scienceissimple@yahoo.com) is the author of Science Is Simple: Over 250 Activities for Preschoolers and teaches preschool science in Alexandria, Virginia.

Teacher’s Picks

Susan J. Johnson

Susan J. Johnson is a preschool teacher in Alexandria, Virginia, and an assistant professor in Early Childhood Education at Northern Virginia Community College. She begins the year with a literacy component to give children direction in their natural tendency to collect. These are some of her favorite resources for this work.

Books

Everybody Needs a Rock. Byrd Baylor. 1985. Aladdin.
Poetry with a purpose, this book prompts children through a series of rules to collect just one perfect personal rock. After reading the book I share my personal rock that resides in my pocket and suggest that when students hunt for rocks on the playground they consider the book’s 10 rules for finding the perfect rock. Some children immediately search and find “their” rock. When they bring it to me we discuss its properties and put it in a tray for further exploration and comparison with other rocks from the collection.

If You Find a Rock. Peggy Christian and Barbara Lember. 2000. Harcourt.
Full of photographs and suggestions on how rocks might be used, this book helps children observe rocks everywhere and begin to speculate on what kind of rock they have found. Further exploration often leads to discovering that some rocks are actually bits of concrete and the realization that the sand in our sandbox is made up of rocks.

Let’s Go Rock Collecting. Roma Gans. 1997. HarperCollins.
Keep this resource next to the collecting tray for the children to look at and read in part or in full as the children’s curiosity dictates. After their initial examination, children’s first question is often, “How are rocks made?” We then try to “make” rocks using different materials such as mud, pottery clay, or sand.

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. William Steig. 2006. Aladdin.
A classic tale with many themes including examining pebbles, wishes, and what it would be like to be a rock! This book opens the door for discussion on what is real and what is pretend.

Internet Resources

A Photo Gallery of Meteorwrongs from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis
http://epsc.wustl.edu/admin/resources/meteorites/meteorwrongs/meteorwrongs.htm
Although the topic is meteorites, the images shown in this photo gallery are rocks and look more like the rocks children find than the images of minerals shown in many galleries. Including coins, pens, and paper money in the photos is especially useful because it makes the scale evident. The reasoning given for grouping is illuminating.

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