Last Saturday, We J762ers had a wonderful play event with around 10 lovely children from age 6 to 11 in the school of education. We provided plenty of materials, such as papers, beads, hardboards, lids, and all other stuff like that and art supplies.
At first, I was standing aside watching them playing. A lovely sweet boy and girl twins caught my attention. They were active but polite and always being together. Once they made a progress in their project, they would eagerly went to their mom's office, on the same floor, to show what they have made to her. Another thing that impressed me a lot is that the six-year old boy Q had been focused on a jigsaw puzzle for a considerably long time and not been distracted at all. After he finished the puzzle, he even went further by decorating it. Finally, the puzzle turned out to be an amazing art work.
Unlike Q's attentiveness, the 6-year old boy J is comparably easily to be distracted. I noticed that he have tried making several projects but always ended in the middle. Watching him lingering around his companions, I though maybe I should help him. I started to make a scale using a round plastic tray and asked him to come to me. He seemed quite interested in the project I was doing. "Do you wanna try?", I asked him and gave him the half finished project. J nodded his heads and took it over and started working on it. To help him, I Googled a picture of the scale to show him what it should be like. With my help, J finally finished the scientific project and did highly focused on it for quite a long time. However, after it's completed, J just put it down and walked away to try other projects. It seems J didn't gain much joy during the process as I expected him to.
I began to question my intervention. The project I chose to work with him may be beyond his current cognitive development since it involves scientific knowledge such as balance. Therefore, everytime he came across problems, I need to step in to help him out. Vygotsky has suggested that there was a zone for proximal development for young children, as adults we need to offer a bridge for him to reach the next level. However, in my case, I didn't find a proper way to help him forward (Maybe there is a construct); what I did is to directly show him what do to and thus J's activeness in the process is weakened to a large degree. Therefore, when he finished the project, he didn't enjoy the fulfillment caused by conquering the cognitive puzzles.
Or even if I adopted a proper way to work with him, would it be better than just not intervention at all in the very first beginning and leaving him walking around. So there is a value judgement, I, as the adult, assumed that J's walking around is absent-mindless and purposeless and thus he could lose the opportunity of playing and learning. However, it could also be possible that J was trying to figure out his own way to experience this play event while my intervention rudely intruded his own world and interrupted this process which might be quite valuable.
Intervene or not?
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