When you read books to individual c

When you read books to individual children or small groups, you have opportunities to recognize the ideas of each child, talk about the illustrations, ask and answer question, go back and read a favorite page one more time, or even skip less interesting parts and go on. Children can chime in, singing the repetitive phrases, reciting the last line, or telling their version of the ending. You can use stories to stimulate children’s interest in a topic, for information, or for summing up a topic or a unit. Stories can be read before nap; after lunch, during activity time, or during a regularly scheduled story time that is planned each day and occurs without fail. During this time, children, stretched out on the floor or clustered around the teacher , enjoy the group experience of listening to a story. One teacher calls this time “belly and book time because his group of 4 –year-olds usually stretch out on their stomachs.
Reading and writing
Just a social studies provides ample opportunities for promoting children’s listening and speaking skills, it also provides a medium for children’s reading and writing. One first-grade class, troubled by a few children who bullied and teased the others, used a language-experience approach to help solve the problem (Froschl & Sprung, 1999). The teacher began by giving children time and space to talk about teasing and bullying. She used books such as Taro Yashima’s (1995) Crow Boy as a discussion point. Afterward, the children wrote experience charts: “I feel welcome when . . .” and “I feel unwelcome when . . .” Together teacher and students developed classroom rules. As the children discussed the merits of various rules, the teacher listed those that the group had decided to keep.
Children can use writing and reading in connection with social studies in hundreds of ways. Children who are just learning to read and write can express their ideas through invented spelling and drawings:
• Drawings are a precursor to children’s narrative composition. Children who have not fully mastered the linguistic code can express their ideas through artwork coupled with discussion and short, teacher-written messages (dictation) to augment their drawings (Coufal & Coufal, 2002).
• Practice writing as part of dramatic play. Provide crayons, receipt books, calendars, note pads, and envelopes for children’s play. Watch children’s play interests. If they are interested in travel play, add tickets and luggage tags. If they play store, add grocery lists, play money, and checkbooks with markers.
• Encourage children to talk about their work, and watch as their words are recorded.
• Include many opportunities to draw. Drawing is probably the single most important activity that assists both writing and reading development as well as understanding of others (Schiller, 1995; Seefeldt, 2000).
Children who are 4 and 5 years old can do the following.
• Dictate and illustrate booklets and stories about their experiences. Children might make booklets about the things they saw on a field trip to a popular clothing store, what they know about shearing sheep after watching a shearing, or what they learned during their trip to the post office.
• Tell about their paintings and drawings, watching as the teacher writes their words.
• Dictate letters to firefighters or other community workers, either asking question or thanking them for a visit.
• Ask the teacher for labels for their buildings, gardens, or other group projects.
• Dictate and record plans for a party or other celebration.
• Dictate their thoughts, ideas, or concerns about a social situation or some other important event in their school.
Children older than age 5 can use reading and reading and writing to do these activities:
• Write about their own experiences, to which the teacher will write a response, in an interactive journal.
• Plan and produce their own class newsletter.
• Vote for the name to be given the hamster, the foods that will be shared at a party, or what games will be played
• Write their own history books and read the books and writings of others about the present and past.

Sharing
Learning to communicate is, in part, learning to share. To communicate, children must share their ideas, take turns talking and listening and share their time and interest. Learning to share is an important goal of preschool-primary education; the welfare of society depends on the willingness of its members to share.
Children do need to share resources-toys, blocks, materials, equipment-in the preschool –primary classroom. They also need to share the teacher’s attention. As children mature, they begin to share in the life of the school, planting gardens, cleaning up the playgroup, putting on a school play, or decorating the hallway. All these activities encourage children’s development of group social responsibilities, resulting in later participation in voting, government, and the concerns of the community and the world.
Everyone finds sharing a little difficult and uncomfortable at first. Each must give up some personal ideas, material, or time, sacrificing something for the good of others. Children have shared with their family and with those in the neighborhood; but once in school, they find they must participate in many other types of sharing and share on a larger scale. When children are part of very large groups, it sometimes seems as if they are called on to share constantly and are never able to have their own needs or desires fulfilled. Their ability to share is closely tied to their total development, especially their social development (McConnell, 2000). As children mature, their ability to share increases. In fact, sharing is a sign of maturity in our culture.
Children share resources as they work and play together.
Researchers have identified levels in children’s development of understanding what others feel, want, and know:
Level 0 (about age 3 to 7). Children are aware that other people think differently but either insist “I can’t read his mind” or blithely assume that people in the same situation have the same point of view. Even 3-year-olds have some understanding of another’s point of view. For instance, studies show that children as young as 18 months are aware that others’ desires might differ from their own (Harris, 1989).
Level 1 (about age 6 to 8). Children realize that two people may see the same situation differently. They become increasingly interested in other people’s inner, psychological life (Lillard & Currenton, 2003).
Level 2 (about age 7 to 12). Now children realize that another person can think about what they are thinking and tune in on their thought processes.
Level 3 (about age 10 to 15). The child can now think about two different viewpoints simultaneously and sees how one influences the other. Children can step back from a two-person relationship and watch how they and another person interact from the viewpoint of a third party.
Level 4 (age 12 to 15). Children can now understanding the role of society and the usefulness of social conventions.
The ability to share does depend on the development of role taking, but it also involves being able to read other people’s emotions. Children have to learn the difference between joy and sadness, anger and happiness, and pain and pleasure in others.
Children seem better able to identify others’ emotions in familiar rather than unfamiliar situations. For instance, children are better able to identify the happiness or unhappiness of children at a birthday party than the emotions of people at a summit meeting.
As a rule, children under the age of 4 do not understanding motives or intentional acts. They assume that all behavior is intentional, even the actions of inanimate object. Between the ages of 5 and 6, children will begin to distinguish between unintended and intended acts. They gradually become able to differentiate between intentional acts and accidents. Up to the of 7, children focus on concrete, observable characteristics; by the age of 8, they can begin to focus on abstract traits such as emotions, personality, and abilities.
Fostering Sharing Behaviors
More sharing takes place in classrooms where there is a feeling of security, a model present who shares, an abundance of materials and equipment, and where sharing is taught.
Security
If children feel secure and if they have enough for themselves, they are better able to share with others. Thus, you need to establish a classroom atmosphere of security. Insecure children are not ready to accept the social techniques of sharing. With young children, small groups with high teacher or adult ratios seem to foster children’s ability to share. Small groups allow the following:
• More teacher-child interaction. Teachers who have too many children to interact with are frustrated and short tempered and do not have time to give children the personal attention that says, “You’re valued and respected” and “I care for you.”
• Increased recognition. Children can share their ideas and thoughts more readily; they have more opportunities to take lunch money to the cafeteria, carry the flag, have their story read, play the game the way they want to, or lead the entire group in a song.
• Feelings of social adequacy. Young children just learning to relate to others can find handing relationship with many other children a monumental task. But with only a few others, children feel more adequate and competent in their ability to relate.
• Consideration of the group context. A shy withdrawn child many feel more secure and able to reach out to others when in a quiet group of children rather than an assertive, aggressive group. Likewise, highly aggressive children may find more security and social acceptance when in a more boisterous group (Stormshak et al., 1999)
Models
Children who observe models sharing appear to be better able to share, and the teacher is the best model. When the teacher is not