Know

The Third Teacher

In Italy, after World War II, a teacher by the name of Loris Malaguzzi, along with parents in the villages outside Reggio Emilia, which were destroyed by the war, got together to create a new approach for teaching young children. The Reggio Emilia philosophy is based on the principles of respect, responsibility, and community. These principles are developed through exploration and discovery in a supportive and enriching environment based on the interests of the children. In Reggio Emilia programs, the environment is known as the third teacher because of its importance to development and learning. The environment should be responsive to the need for teachers and children to create learning together. The classroom environment can help shape a child’s identity as a leader in his or her own life and the life of others. The environment communicates messages about who is valued in a space, how to interact with materials, and how to engage and participate with others in a collaborative way.

According to the philosophy, the child’s first teacher is a parent who takes on the role of active participant in guiding the education of the child. The second teacher is you, the caregiver within the classroom setting. The third teacher, the environment, when appropriately designed has the ability to communicate and guide children’s learning and behavior. It is the combination of a child’s relationships with parent, teacher, and environment that best promotes learning.

Just like adults, preschool-age children are affected by their environments. It is our job to ensure classrooms and other learning spaces for children make them feel welcome, secure, and ready to learn. Your classroom environment should be organized yet flexible to children’s changing needs. This will help maximize children’s engagement and learning. This lesson will highlight the significance of purposefully creating environments and choosing materials that facilitate children’s learning and growth. The final lesson in this course will discuss experiences and activities that promote cognitive development.

Environments and Materials that Promote Preschooler's Cognitive Development

Children are natural explorers, but there is still a lot you can do to help them learn and grow. To facilitate children’s exploration and learning, you first need to identify the interests of the children in your classroom. You can then meaningfully design your environment and find materials to spark exploration. Finally, you can plan experiences that promote learning. Remember that children learn about the world around them in a variety of ways. Exploration and discovery are vital to young children’s cognitive development. Your program should provide children with plenty of opportunities to engage in activities that promote learning in multiple areas including: math, science, social studies, language and literacy, art, and technology.

How you facilitate and nurture active learning is extremely important. In other words, the way you structure and organize your environments and materials for children can make a huge difference in their development. Your classroom environment should be organized in a way that it enables children to engage in meaningful learning. Think about your classroom interest areas. When a child in your classroom enters a purposefully designed interest area, do they know what materials they can find there, the type of play (loud, quiet, social, or solitary) that might happen there, the expectations for how to behave, and ways in which they can explore, learn, and have fun in the space?

As highlighted in Lesson One, learning is both individual and social and it takes place within social and cultural contexts. Therefore, you need to make sure your learning environment provides opportunities for children to engage in individual work, as well as meaningful interactions with peers and adults in your room throughout the day. Again, consider the layout of your classroom. How are your interest areas or centers set up? Are there interesting and developmentally appropriate materials for children to manipulate, explore, and learn from? When thinking about interactions with peers, how are you setting up the environment for these interactions to take place? For example, do you consider providing fewer items (e.g., blocks, play dough, letter cutouts, age-appropriate scissors) to encourage children to work with their peers, share and learn from each other? When disagreements arise among children, do you encourage them to use their words and try to solve a situation on their own while making yourself available in case they cannot figure it out? Challenging behaviors can often be prevented by looking at the arrangement of the environment and asking yourself these questions. The solution to undesirable behaviors if often discovered by changing one or more things in the environment. The materials and arrangement of a classroom can play a major role in the relationships and interactions that happen between children. 

Features of Classroom Environments that Promote Young Children's Cognitive Development

The National Center on Quality Teaching and Learning (2015) identifies features of the physical and social classroom environment that maximize young children’s engagement and learning. These features refer to how the classroom space should be organized to facilitate children’s meaningful participation in classroom experiences and include well-designed physical spaces, relevant contexts, and intentional groupings. 

Well-designed physical spaces: Think about how you organize the different interest areas in your classroom and ask yourself these questions: Are there spaces for large group work as well as areas for small group or individual work? Are areas for quite work located in a different location from areas that involve loud work? Is furniture used to create boundaries and help direct or facilitate children’s safe movement in the room? Can you see all areas in the room to be able to monitor what children are doing at all times? 

Relevant Contexts: These refer to the learning materials, toys, or objects that you provide for children to play with, learn from, and explore. All of these materials should be meaningfully selected to support children’s development and learning. As you make choices about these materials you should ask yourself questions such as: Do these materials support the learning goals you have for children? Are they culturally relevant? Are they interesting and fun? Do they promote interactions and exchanges among children? Is the emphasis on the quality of the material and its uses over the quantity that is available? Are they open-ended and do they allow for creative expression?

Intentional Groupings: The way you make decisions about grouping children in your classroom can impact their engagement and learning. How do you make decisions about grouping children? Do you consider the types of activities or children’s ages, interests, or backgrounds? What are some other factors that you take into consideration? 

In the References and Resources section of this lesson, you can find citations with links for the website of the National Center on Quality Teaching and Learning. As you explore these resources, think about how you can incorporate some of these ideas to improve outcomes for all children in your classroom and program.

Promoting Exploration and Discovery in Preschool

Exploration and discovery happen all the time as children pursue interesting ideas. Teachers should become co-explorers with preschoolers by helping to keep discoveries alive and providing them time, space, and freedom to explore and investigate their interests and ideas. Adults can model creativity, thoughtfulness, and curiosity that is necessary for exploration. By showing their own interests in materials and experiences, adults can teach children about the value of exploration. 

Discoveries, investigations, and experiments can be related to a wide variety of areas or concepts. Children can investigate science concepts, letters, sounds, numbers, music, the ways in which our bodies move, or the ways in which we can use art to express ourselves, our feelings, or ideas. You can set the stage so that children express their curiosities, have fun, and learn. Read about the following environments and materials that spark exploration. 

Discovery centers: Discovery centers let children explore materials on their own. The best discovery centers are located near natural light. They include plenty of organic materials. Tools are available for children to manipulate items. Material suggestions include magnifying glasses, eye droppers, tweezers, screwdrivers, and balance scales. Children may also tinker with safe “take apart” objects (toasters, clocks, etc.). A class pet might live in the discovery center. Writing tools like paper, pencils, and clipboards should be available for children to record their observations. 

Investigations: Young children thrive when they have the opportunity to explore their interests in-depth. Also called projects or studies, investigations give children the opportunity to use research to answer interesting questions. For example, following children’s interests in homes, you can promote classroom investigations about different types of homes and engage children in activities such as reading books about homes, taking a walk in the neighborhood to look at different types of homes, sharing information about their own homes, or building their own homes using materials at school. Making real-life items such as stone, brick, roofing shingles, and pipes available in the discovery center can build upon this interest.

Experiments: Experiments can be a powerful way for children to explore their curiosities about the environment and objects. Curiosity is where thinking and understanding emerge. In experiments, children can ask questions, make predictions, and test their hypotheses. An example of a common experiment is asking children whether objects will sink or float. Following children’s interests, you can engage them in different kinds of experiments in your classroom environment. As their teacher, you can model the steps involved in experimentation through planned experiences. You can:

1. Define the problem.
2. Brainstorm predictions.
3. Create experiments.
4. Analyze the results.
5. Extend the experience.

Environments and Materials that Address the Needs of All Learners

There are many things you can do in your learning environment to help all children meet important learning goals. The first and most important step is to gather information about the children in your care. You will need to know what children are able to do well and what seems to be challenging. Gathering information will help you know the skills and strategies that are likely to help children.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is one strategy you can use. UDL helps all people learn and be successful in their environments. There are examples of universal design principles all around us: audio books, curb cutouts for strollers and wheelchairs, keyless entry on cars, and electric can openers. Many of these tools were developed for people with disabilities, but they make life easier for all of us. Early childhood professionals can use UDL principles as a guide to designing program spaces that are accessible and supportive of all children and families. Some examples of what teachers can do in their classrooms to support children with special learning needs include using a picture schedule, adapting seating arrangements, or sharing vocabulary words with children before reading them a story. For additional examples demonstrating the use of UDL, please refer to Lesson Five in this course, Supporting Cognitive Development: Experiences and Activities.  

The Figure below shows three strategies for using UDL and offers examples of each.

Reflecting on Your Own Practices

It is important to recognize the messages you send in your classroom. Sometimes biases sneak into our environments, materials, or interactions. Awareness of your own bias is an important step in supporting development. Think about which of the following biases might be in your own classroom:

• Biased language. Language can send stereotypical gender messages. Adults might call children "baby girl," "big boy," or "cutie" rather than their given names. Staff might encourage girls to "be careful" while saying "boys will be boys." To fight this bias, you could encourage peaceful solutions for all children. Avoid directions like not hitting girls or not hitting kids with glasses. Be sure to comment equally on girls' and boys' appearances and accomplishments.
• Stereotypical play opportunities. Children are often encouraged to play in certain ways (e.g., girls with dolls and boys with trucks). Make sure boys and girls get equal access and encouragement for playing "house," woodworking, music, science, active play, and messy play. Comment on the child’s action with a material rather than your personal influences or cultural expectations.
• Biased materials. Sometimes posters and materials for the classroom present stereotypical images (e.g., Native Americans in war paint, an all-male construction crew). Make sure the images in your classroom show men and women equally in a variety of professions. Make sure drawings or photos of people with disabilities are respectful images. Include books that show different ethnic backgrounds, social classes, and family structures.

There are many ways you can enhance the curriculum to improve children's understanding and acceptance of culture. The following are some examples (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010):

• Classroom props or materials: Include props from a variety of cultures. Toy food, menus, books, dramatic play clothes, furniture, and musical instruments can all reflect experiences from around the world. Art materials should include a range of materials for representing skin tones and various artistic styles, fabrics of various patterns, and books about art around the world.
• Bulletin boards and displays: This space can be used to reflect and respect family traditions. Ask families to bring in pictures or other items for the board. Children can spend time researching their own or another culture and documenting what they have learned.
• Class books or biographies: Books about children in the class document the real experiences of children and families. Encourage children to create pictures, drawings, and text about their lives, ideas, and families.
• Family stories: Provide families with materials and instructions for creating a Family Book. Families and children can work together to talk about and record their family history and daily life. This can be a great way to introduce children and families to one another.
• Storytelling: Encourage grandparents or community elders to share stories of their childhoods with the class or group. These can be audio-recorded or transcribed to create keepsake books for the class.
• Messages from home: Using a tape recorder, encourage family members to record a brief message in their home language. This can be played for a child when he or she is upset or homesick.
• Music: Include music tapes or CDs and songs from different cultures during music time or circle time.
• Field trips: Visit community cultural landmarks. Go see a dance troupe, play, or musical performance that will broaden children's cultural perspectives.
• Collaborative work: Encourage children to work together in groups. This may minimize the pressure on a child who is learning English. It also exposes children to a variety of ideas and encourages creativity.
• Snacks and meals: Invite families to share a traditional meal or snack with the children.

See

Teachers and staff in a classroom can support exploration and promote cognitive development by adopting a general attitude of exploration (Dodge et al., 2002). When adults consider themselves fellow explorers in the discovery process, children benefit.

Do

There are many ways teachers can promote exploration and problem-solving through the materials they provide within the environment. Below is a list of ideas to keep in mind when choosing materials for cognitive development. 

• Ensure materials are safe. All toys and materials need to be safe. When evaluating your materials, watch out for sharp edges or projections, as well as chipping paint. Select items that are nontoxic. 
• Select materials that are easy for preschoolers to access and handle on their own. Young children learn by manipulating items by themselves; however, be ready to assist them if needed. Materials should be readily available so that children can access them independently without asking and adult for assistance.
• Select materials that support cognitive development for the age group served. Use developmental milestone information to make choices that support cognitive development. Understand that materials may serve a different learning purpose for different age groups.
• Choose items that are used in homes (e.g. kitchen spatulas, serrated spoons, strainers, wooden spoons, plastic bowls, shoe boxes, dish towels). This links home and preschool experiences in the eyes of the child and shows families that learning materials are often at their fingertips and inexpensive. A lot of these materials are also open-ended, and therefore appropriate for children at different ages and developmental stages. 
• Examine each item and evaluate how it promotes child development. Does it support cause and effect actions? Does it utilize fine motor skills? Does it promote symbolic thinking? Does it help them practice problem-solving skills? Most materials should be applicable to a multiple of these inquiries.
• Include materials that support each child’s interest and skill level. For example, you can offer different types of child-safe scissors for preschoolers to explore and identify which they prefer.  
• Provide exact duplicates and triplicates (same color, size, function) of the same item. This allows more than one child to play and learn at the same time and supports social-emotional growth and development.
• Choose materials that honor diversity. Materials should be representative of children and families who attend the program and the community and should promote positive portrayal of all persons. A variety of materials should include people of differing genders, roles and occupations (female firefighter, male caring for a young child), ages, ethnicities, and ability level (person wearing glasses, person using an assistive device like a walker or a wheelchair).
• Offer materials that include a variety of textures, skills, colors, sizes, shapes, and functions. Items can be made of wood, metal, plastic, cloth, or vinyl and be smooth, bumpy, rough, soft, or hard. 
• Ask meaningful questions when exploring materials. The best questions to spark scientific discovery are open-ended questions. Questions like, “Why do you think that happened?” and “What do you think will happen next?” start conversations and spark exploration.