Powerful Interactions

How to Connect with Children to Extend Their Learning, Second Edition

Amy Laura Dombro, Judy Jablon, Charlotte Stetson

• Publisher: The National Association for the Education of Young Children
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781938113734
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

In early childhood settings, children and teachers interact all day long. The benefits to everyone—teachers and children—are enormous when even some of those everyday interactions become intentional and purposeful Powerful Interactions!

• In step one of a Powerful Interaction, Be Present, you pause to tune in to how you are feeling and consider how you might need to adjust to create a "just-right" fit with a child.
• In step two, Connect, you let that child know that you see her; are interested in what she is doing, saying, and thinking; and want to spend time with her. Deepening your relationship this way helps the child feel safe, confident, and open to learning. Staying connected and observant helps you make good decisions in step three.
• In step three, Extend Learning, you make use of your strong connection with the child to stretch her knowledge, skills, thinking, or language and vocabulary just a bit.

Now revised and updated, this reflective guide contains everything you need to understand what Powerful Interactions are, how to make them happen, and why they are so important in increasing children's learning and your effectiveness as a teacher. Whether you work in a child care center or family child care setting, Early Head Start or Head Start program, or a public pre-K or primary classroom, you make a difference in the lives of children and families—and Powerful Interactions can make that difference even bigger.

STEP THREE

Extend Learning

As you nurture your relationship, stretch the child’s knowledge and understanding.

As you read this chapter, give yourself permission to pause and reflect. We invite you to jot down notes about ideas and strategies that you want to add to your teaching practice.

Here you are together—for a minute or maybe five—and you’ve made a connection. As you sustain that connection, deepening your relationship with the child, you can make the interaction into a Powerful Interaction by simultaneously extending the child’s learning just a bit. When children know they can count on you to support their exploration and provide comfort and protection if needed, they feel safe, competent, and able to move out into the world, or “take distance” to explore, experiment, and learn (Cooper, Hoffman, & Powell 2017; Sigel 1993). The combination of intentionally building your relationship and extending a child’s learning is the essence of a Powerful Interaction.

In Step Three, you not only model for the child how to learn, you also stretch the child’s thinking and knowledge, all in a way that is just right for that child. No matter what you teach, how you interact with children as you teach influences how well children learn. Children who have positive relationships with their teachers also are more engaged in learning. When they feel the comfort and security that comes from a trusting relationship, children are more willing to explore, ask questions, solve problems, try new challenges, and express their thinking (Epstein 2014; McCormick et al. 2013).

Tips for How to Extend Learning

Here are a few ideas for how you can extend learning from the Arkansas Powerful Interactions Focus Group:

❯ When you approach extending learning as “I want to see the world through your eyes,” it gives you the opportunity to learn with the child.

❯ Writing down what children say strengthens the connection, models literacy, and increases trust.

❯ Be reflective, not directive.

You met the teachers in the following examples in the chapter “Step Two: Connect.” Now, let’s look at how they use their relationships with the children as the foundation for extending each child’s learning:

William is quietly engaged in the discovery area placing a plastic insect inside a container to observe it. Jenny, his preschool teacher, is curious about his actions and hopes that through a Powerful Interaction, she can learn more about his interests and his thinking. She approaches the area calmly and bends down beside him. She watches as he attempts to close the container with the insect inside. Jenny’s initial instinct is to reach out and help, but instead she sits back and waits. A few seconds later, they connect and make eye contact as William hands her the container to hold as he puts on the lid. He places the container up to Jenny’s eye and asks her to look. She shares her observation with him and then William puts the container to his eye and takes a look.

Jenny asks, “Can you describe what you see?” William tells Jenny what he notices about the insect, and she responds to his observations. As they continue to study the insect and engage in a conversation about it, Jenny introduces William to new vocabulary words like exoskeleton and thorax.

• • •

Three-year-old Celia dumps a basket of smooth stones on the rug and begins putting them back in one by one, saying a number in random order each time. Mr. Yosef settles in next to her on the floor and, leaning in toward her just a little bit, comments, “I heard all these numbers and wondered who was practicing their counting. It’s Celia!” She says, “Wanna watch me?”

She counts to 5, randomly pointing to the stones. Mr. Yosef decides to help her move from random counting to one-to-one object counting. “Shall we count them together?” Celia nods her head. Mr. Yosef models how to count objects, saying, “Let’s get our fingers ready to point. We’ll point to each one as we say the number. Ready?” Celia sticks out her finger and together they point and count.

• • •

Slowly and methodically, 4-year-old Khalid looks through every book on the bookshelf. Mr. Hall watches him and decides to initiate a Powerful Interaction. He silently kneels beside him and joins in his search for a good book. After a few seconds, Khalid takes one of the books off the shelf, holds it in his lap, and begins turning the pages slowly. Mr. Hall does the same. Sitting quietly beside Khalid, Mr. Hall watches to see the child’s body settle and senses that he is getting comfortable with the teacher’s presence before beginning to talk about the book.

Mr. Hall says, “I’m curious about the book you’re looking at, Khalid. The pictures of the shoes look very interesting. Can we look at it together?” Khalid turns to look at him, slides the book over so that it is between them, points to a pair of cowboy boots, and says, “These are my favorite.” A back-and-forth conversation about what Khalid is reading and noticing in the book begins. Mr. Hall makes sure to bring out key concepts about print and interesting vocabulary during their conversation.

What Does It Mean to “Extend Learning”?

A Powerful Interaction is a teachable moment with a child—a chance for skillful and deliberate teaching. During a Powerful Interaction, you have a window into the child’s experience and thinking because in that moment, your attention is focused on the child, her actions and/or language. As Munro (2008) states, “the greatest opportunity for learning lies in moments of teacher–child interaction, when the teacher crafts learning experiences that stretch children just beyond their current skill level” (47).

“ Extend doesn’t happen until you put your heart and soul into being present and connecting.

—Beth Gill Huber, master teacher from Tennessee

In this rich teaching moment, you stay present so that you can make intentional, sensitive, and responsive decisions about an individual child’s learning needs. Just as you need to be alert to how children react each time you invite a connection, the teaching strategy you choose in Step Three may need to shift as children learn and develop, each in his or her own unique way.

Addressing Opportunities to Extend Learning

There are three questions that will help you make effective decisions about how to extend a child’s learning. Each question is examined separately so you can understand and think about each one carefully.

What’s the Right Content to Teach in this Moment?

Being present and focused on a child (Step One: Be Present) and observing what is interesting and significant about what that child is doing (Step Two: Connect) help you know what the child needs from you in order to learn in this moment. Is the chi...