a big idea

How do we help children to think?

I created a class newsletter for my nine and ten year olds. It had several sections in it for different curriculum areas and for different aspects of our life in school. One of the sections I called “The Big Ideas.” It was a place to report on some of the interesting, thought-provoking conversations we had in class every day, on a wide range of topics: the environment, friendship, civil rights, the beginning of our country, music, religion, and so on.

Each time we produced this newsletter, students would ask me, “What am I supposed to write for The Big Ideas?”

“Can you remember any big ideas or thoughtful conversations we had yesterday?”

“No,” they would answer.

I began to make a practice of pointing out when a big idea appeared. We would read something together about the Great Depression and discuss what inflation is. “Did you notice that was a big idea?”

Young children do not normally think deeply about their thinking. They form categories based on literal, observable aspects of things, not on essential or formal qualities. When we set up our library, for example, I asked the students to suggest categories for the different sections. “Animal stories” was an important one. It didn’t really matter to them whether the animals were in a mystery or a fantasy or historical fiction; they just wanted to know the story was about animals.

So one way to inspire more “thinking about thinking” is to give them concrete experiences of it. The social act of creating this newsletter helped them discover what an idea is and what makes it big. By attaching the phrase “big idea” to several actual conversations, they formed an association for it in their minds which they might be able to extend to new conversations. The process of education is so full of marvels when it is approached in this way.

: : : Children learn about abstractions through naming their experience.