Kindergarten teacher, Mary Anne Camel, makes a case for beginning each school day with inquiry and play. Mary Anne leans on her extensive Responsive Classroom training to facilitate play experiences that are both culturally-relevant as well as student-driven.
Olivia’s Article Highlighting Mary Anne’s Work Around Play:
Other Resources:
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Kindergarten teacher, Mary Anne Camel, makes a case for beginning each school day with inquiry and play. Mary Anne leans on her extensive Responsive Classroom training to facilitate play experiences that are both culturally-relevant as well as student-driven.
Olivia’s Article Highlighting Mary Anne’s Work Around Play:
Other Resources:
Articles, Books & Blogs
Video Clips
Get solutions from Schoolutions!
#solutionsfromschoolutions #schoolutionsinspires #schoolutionspodcast
Schoolutions –S1 E8: Bringing Joy to the Start of Each Day Through Play with Mary Anne Camel
[00:00:00] Olivia: Welcome to Schoolutions, where listening will leave you inspired by solutions to issues you or others you know may be struggling with in the public education system today. Hello, I am Olivia Wahl, and I am excited to introduce you to my friend and guest, Mary Anne Camel. Mary Anne graduated from Cornell University with a bachelor's degree in human development and family studies.
[00:00:27] Olivia: She completed her master's degree at NYU in Early Childhood Education. Mary Anne has over 20 years of teaching experience. She has primarily taught kindergarten, but it also has taught third and fifth grade. I had the gift as a mom to have my son, Henry in Mary Anne's class in 2017 to 2018. She left an imprint on him around play and stamina that shaped who he is today as a fourth grader.
[00:00:55] Olivia: So welcome, Mary Anne. I'm so glad to have you.
[00:00:58] Mary Anne: Thank you for having me.
[00:00:58] Olivia: I know that from being a volunteer in your classroom, that you start each day with play. It really encompasses everything you do in the classroom. That notion of inquiry-based learning as a kindergarten teacher. And before we jump into that, I love to ask every guest who is an inspiring teacher in your world that comes to mind?
[00:01:21] Olivia:
[00:01:22] Mary Anne: Probably I would have to my mom. The first teacher, right? She was really good at setting broad boundaries, but letting me kind of approach things my way, make my own mistakes, be dirty, be curious, be outside, all those things. She would even let me draw on the basement walls, things like that, just to explore. My creative side.
[00:01:45] Olivia: Which is so much of what play and inquiry are about, right? Curiosity and exploration.
[00:01:52] Olivia: I think too right now, play is not valued the way it should be. And again, you not only prioritize play, but you kick off each day with play. Your work the way Henry's day was structured in your classroom. I tried to capture that in an article, Why Every Kindergarten and First Grade School Day Should Begin with Inquiry and Imaginative Play, because it sets the tone for the day.
[00:02:17] Olivia: It's not a carrot that's dangled over a child, something to be lost. So, I'd love for you to speak more about that. Why do you choose to begin every day with play?
[00:02:29] Mary Anne: Well, first, I want kids to be happy to come in the morning. Mornings can be hard for a lot of kids. It's a huge transition, especially in kindergarten, leaving grownups and safe places to come to a new, new environment.
[00:02:40] Mary Anne: And I want kids to always feel like there's something in their day that brought them joy and that they can find success in. And play is, is it for kids, really, right? When they explore the world, they make mistakes. They fix mistakes. Um, and that actually brings them joy and independence. And I think that's the goal of kindergarten is really to teach independence and play is something that kids naturally migrate towards, and then we can support them in becoming increasingly independent through play.
[00:03:11] Olivia: So, help us envision. Children are walking into your classroom…8:00AM probably 7:45-ish, a little early. How do you set them up for success to jump right into it?
[00:03:24] Mary Anne: Well, once they settle in, they then, you know, hang up the belongings, check in with me. We do a quick morning message. They have some idea of what's happening early in the day.
[00:03:33] Mary Anne: Pre-COVID, I would have different bins of activities just sitting on the tables and they could just find one that met their need at the moment. During COVID, I have smaller bins that they can select and take to their individual desks. They begin playing while kids kind of float in cuz it's all, it's really a 25-minute transition from the time the door opens and the first kid comes in and the time the last student gets in.
[00:04:00] Mary Anne: So that's 25 minutes of what I would call sponging, like soaking 'em in.
[00:04:04] Olivia: Mm-hmm.
[00:04:05] Mary Anne: And then they're engaged and that gives me time to also check in with kids who are maybe having a trickier transition. Um, so that's the beginning of…
[00:04:14] Olivia: Nice…
[00:04:14] Mary Anne: …of just kind of the soft play. I'd say really predictable. And then we do pause and have morning meeting and then move into more of the larger areas of play, like big blocks and dramatic play carpet.
[00:04:29] Olivia: So how do the kids (after morning meeting) select where they're going to go?
[00:04:33] Mary Anne: I have one small group that's working with me first, so they don't get their initial choice, but they have the pleasure of knowing I will not interrupt them to pull them later.
[00:04:42] Mary Anne: So that's the advantage of going first. And then the other student, it's really randomized. We pull fairness sticks out of a cup and ask them to go make a choice. At the beginning year, it's totally choice-based. Usually, mid-year I start to encourage more traditional academic choices as a some, as a way of moving through all the areas.
[00:05:04] Mary Anne: Do your your math choice first, and then the other kind of math-based play activities are now available just to kind of bring some balance, the whole shows, they're ready to kind of do that first, then idea.
[00:05:17] Olivia: Would you name some of the different options that they can choose from?
[00:05:22] Mary Anne: Sure! We always have snack and then there's an art activity, so that could be really just kind of open-ended.
[00:05:29] Mary Anne: I might just put paper out with either markers or gel pens or watercolors, different materials. Or it could be something that's kind of anchored in a text that's used collage. Um, and then I give them a chance to try it on their own. We have books always available so they could go to the library and explore the books in the classroom.
[00:05:52] Mary Anne: And we have dramatic play, which usually rotates. Something new, comes in about every four to six weeks. There are certain ones I've seem to always do. I start the school year kind of just with that kitchen area, something that a lot of students have seen if they've been in a preschool setting. And then it will change.
[00:06:14] Mary Anne: Sometimes it's a campsite, sometimes it's post office, the vet clinic. Towards the, um, spring, I usually start to ask them to influence what they might want in that area. And if I can figure out, oh, we can figure out together a way to make it happen, we transform it into their ideas. Big blocks all year long.
[00:06:33] Mary Anne: Lots of building. And then there's the one that is kind of the wild card choice. So, this year I'm doing whoever the helper is, gets to choose from any of the toys that are on the toy shelves. They could choose Magna Tiles or they could choose cars and roads or the train set. Then on Friday, since my my at home children are getting bigger and they don't use their great toys as much.
[00:06:57] Mary Anne: I've been bringing in the, the toys from home.
[00:07:02] Olivia: Oh, so fun!
[00:07:02] Mary Anne: …and they live on our toys shelf. And then on Friday we, we get a little fun, something that hadn't been on the shelf so.
[00:07:08] Olivia: It's interesting to hear that some centers stay or choices stay all year and evolve with the kids, and then others do rotate. I know one of the hardest things to nurture independence is setting clear expectations.
[00:07:20] Olivia: What does this look like? What does this feel like? And I want listeners to understand that you don't just send the kids off into the vet center. You have ways of coaching the children around what it looks and feels like. Can you speak to that?
[00:07:35] Mary Anne: Yeah, it's something I learned through Responsive Classroom.
[00:07:38] Mary Anne: It's making a T-chart with what does it look like and sound like when we are using any given space. So, the library has a set that stays there all year cause it doesn't really change, but dramatic play, since it's a rotating area. We will brainstorm together given the materials we see and how the space is set up.
[00:07:56] Mary Anne: What do we think it should look like when we're near this area? So, for example, with the vet clinic, we would talk about being gentle with our stuffies. Or making sure we, we put the medicine cups away when we're done. If we notice something is on the floor, we pick it up immediately because, it’s a vet clinic, we're here to make sure these, these stuffies stay healthy.
[00:08:16] Mary Anne: And then what does it sound like often? Would it, the sound like actually ends up kind of translating through all areas, right?
[00:08:22] Olivia: Yes.
[00:08:23] Mary Anne: It's how we interact with one another, right? Use our manners, asking a calm voice. Um, those kinds of things always end up popping up repeatedly, which is good because that the end game of kindergarten is to communicate your thoughts and feelings in a way that can be received.
[00:08:41] Olivia: I think of the block area that you were very smart to put the area in the classroom along, I think it was a radiator, and so there was a magnetic option available and I remember you would have illustrations or photos of a variety of buildings and some questions to spark children's curiosity.
[00:09:03] Olivia: Do you still have that? What? What are those questions?
[00:09:07] Mary Anne: I do. So, I'm in a different space, so it's no longer by the magnetic radiator.
[00:09:10] Olivia: Darn.
[00:09:11] Mary Anne: But I do have, um, I do have the pictures. I put them in dollar store frames I just popped.
[00:09:17] Olivia: Great idea.
[00:09:17] Mary Anne: I popped the glass out and laminated pictures and dollar store frames. They are beautiful.
[00:09:20] Mary Anne: Some of the prompts would be like: I can build a bridge or I can build a building with 10 blocks, say the beginning of the year when we're working on counting 10, I could build a building with 20 blocks up to 100. I can build a building that has cylinders. So, we're working on geometric shapes. I can build buildings with windows. Which is challenging for kids to think about negative space.
[00:09:46] Olivia: Yes.
[00:09:46] Mary Anne: I can build a two-story building or three-story building. All those kinds of learning targets that encourages them to try something a little different if they haven't already observed a peer do it. Oftentimes if they're building with a, a peer and the peer tries something, then it kind of catches like wildfire.
[00:10:03] Olivia: Yes.
[00:10:03] Mary Anne: You know, they’ll try on different things. So, I usually pull those learning targets out when I see that blocks has kind of gone stale for a little while. The nature of the buildings are sort of either built just piles of blocks, which often is an indicator they need a little more direction. Or the buildings are sort of the same thing.
[00:10:20] Olivia: I did hear you mention snack was also part of this. How do you manage snack when you are either one-on-one with a child or in a small group? What does that look like?
[00:10:31] Mary Anne: Right. Well, Pre-COVID we, I would look more communal. We would have whatever the food choices that we decided were gonna go out for the day would be there in bulk with a numbered card and students would know, oh, it's one bag or two scoops.
[00:10:46] Mary Anne: That sort of thing. And so, it was honor system that they would read the card and take what they needed and then go to the snack table. Due to COVID, now we've kind of prepackaged their snacks, so it isn't quite as interactive, but the expectation is that they have to monitor their need for food. They go and they get their coffee filter full of whatever today's snack is and return it to their desk to eat it.
[00:11:07] Mary Anne: Actually, it's interesting because monitoring their need for food was is really tricky this year. It's not something that I've experienced in the past. I hear: I forgot to get snack, or I didn't get snack, and so I'm giving reminders…
[00:11:23] Olivia: Yes.
[00:11:23] Mary Anne: …towards the end of our choice time to check with your belly because we'll be cleaning up in 10 minutes.
[00:11:30] Mary Anne: You can get your snack if you aren't really hungry and you don't wanna eat it, that's okay. Set it on your desk and we can have it when we get back from Specials. But a little bit of self-care and it's hard for some five-year-olds to monitor their needs.
[00:11:43] Olivia: It is. Being able to spend a year in your classroom learning from you.
[00:11:48] Olivia: I watched you with children and the way that you coached into play without solving problems for the children and elicited conversation. Could you speak to some resources that you could offer for listeners?
[00:12:03] Mary Anne: A lot of what I've learned was through Responsive Classroom. When I first joined, it was a big resource for newer teachers in the district. And the idea of open-ended questioning or certain sentence starters like: show me or I noticed those kinds of just general two words, sentence starters, can open up the world of discussion that keeps kids feeling really safe, that there is no judgment here. I'm just trying to understand. So, I think that training and and time with that, I think I did it for two years.
[00:12:35] Olivia: Ok.
[00:12:35] Mary Anne: …at the beginning of my tenure at ICSD.
[00:12:38] Olivia: When you're working with children, you're right down at their level. I remembered once I came late into your classroom and I couldn't find you because you were mixed right in with the students. Just getting down to see the world at their angle, their lens.
[00:12:53] Olivia: It's so important for our children to have that. I also watched as there were two children that wanted to go to the same area and there wasn't enough space. Could you speak to listeners of how you navigate that with children? The coaching around not getting your way always?
[00:13:10] Mary Anne: It's a hard pill to swallow!
[00:12:53] Olivia: Oh, it is!
[00:13:12] Mary Anne: So, part of it, it's trying to understand another person's perspective. I mean, really it comes down to that. So, I wanna give kids, you know, options. You could say: I'd like a turn. Can you let me know when you're finished? That's one way of letting a person know that you'd like to play in that area, and you realize only two people can be there right now. Another would be we have, um, sand timers in our classroom.
[00:13:35] Mary Anne: And you can bring them over and say, do you need three more minutes or five more minutes before I get to have a turn? And then the person who's having a turn can, can choose and then it's honored.
[00:13:44] Mary Anne: Then another conversation would be: How many times have you been here today? Cause some kids will pop in and out a few times and that can be hard for a student who hasn't had a turn at all. We, we practice…
[00:13:54] Mary Anne:
[00:13:55] Olivia: Got it.
[00:13:55] Mary Anne: It's almost a script in many ways, right? Oh, well I haven't had attorney yet and I'm noticing this is your second go. And then we talked about how it feels when someone's got two and you have zero. And most kindergarteners are like: Yeah, that's not fair. And they will just graciously say, okay, well, let me know if you finish early and then I'll come back kinda thing.
[00:14:14] Olivia: Yeah.
[00:14:14] Mary Anne: So, a lot of practice and discussion around the feelings that we have when we're trying to be patient for a turn, or the feelings we have when we would really like to stay longer. but we know the right thing to do is give another person a chance to use the area.
[00:14:29] Olivia: I know that you carve a good hour and 15 minutes for play.
[00:14:35] Mary Anne: Yeah.
[00:14:35] Olivia: At the beginning of the day, and often when I speak of you to other kindergarten, first, even second, third, fourth, fifth grade teachers about how you begin the day. It's gobsmacking to them. The amount of time that you dedicate to play an inquiry every morning and trying to figure out how to quote unquote fit everything in there is a schedule based on your classroom in the article, I'll share that in the show notes.
[00:15:02] Olivia: What I watched at the end of play that I'm sure has had to be altered since when you're wrapping, you use a transitional bridge to get kids to move from play and inquiry into whatever you're moving into. And I watched you didn't have children at that time clean up their own area. They brought them back and then sent them back out into the world.
[00:15:25] Olivia: Can you speak more to that? And then where that's gone since.
[00:15:28] Mary Anne: So that bringing them back into a circle is the cornerstone of my behavior management in my classroom. Like we're a community, we're together, we're in it, we're gonna work together. And so, during play, there are a lot of independent choices going on, and so I bring them back together so that we are cleaning as a community and that we all use the space and we all want the space to be usable.
[00:15:53] Mary Anne: So even if you hadn't played, say in the block area and there are blocks to be picked up, there's a chance that I might ask you to pick them up and someone else will clean up the area that you had been working in. I think the idea in my heart is that I want them to realize if they see something that's out that needs to be picked up it doesn't matter if they used it or not, it still needs to be picked up and we should pick it up.
[00:16:17] Olivia: Yes.
[00:16:17] Mary Anne: It's like if I'm walking on the street and I see there's a soda bottle on the sidewalk, instead of walking past it, I'll pick it up and put it in the trash. Right? It's caring for your environment.
[00:16:27] Olivia: Yes.
[00:16:28] Mary Anne: And I think it, it also will spread into caring for others in many ways too.
[00:16:34] Olivia: I agree. Yeah.
[00:16:33] Mary Anne: Right? Sadly, COVID makes that challenging as we have to keep certain distances. I've had to drop that a little cuz many of them are at individual seats. They have to clean their area.
[00:16:44] Olivia: Yeah.
[00:16:44] Mary Anne: But the kids who are in the more communal spaces will with a partner in those areas, and then if some of the job feels big, early finisher can, can kind of help out.
[00:16:55] Mary Anne: But I do like the idea of always coming together, recentering. It's also a lot of times I'm noticing this year it's trickier for kids to transition environmental shifts, right? Helps the transition. If it's not right in front of you, it's easier to say, okay, I can now move on. When it's right in front of you, sometimes it can be hard to stop.
[00:17:14] Mary Anne: So, it just sort of smoothed that transition out.
[00:17:16] Olivia: Yes. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to share about play and inquiry and starting your student's day off with that as a priority. I'm hoping listeners got great ideas to get this going and start, and I definitely wanna continue the dialogue.
[00:17:34] Olivia: I'm hoping you may be willing to listeners reaching out to you, perhaps. You are brilliant. And I have seen Henry develop into a fourth grader that has endless amounts of stamina and stick-to-itiveness because of the play opportunities he had in your kindergarten class. This has a ripple effect that goes so far reaching.
[00:17:56] Olivia: Thank you. As a mom, thank you for what you do for our children, how you advocate for play and inquiry.
[00:18:02] Mary Anne: Thank you for that wonderful rapport. Very welcome.
[00:18:06] Olivia: You’re the best. Thank you!