As I've mentioned in a past post, sharing is an unbelievably difficult concept to teach well, partially because it's so counter-intuitive to the 3-year-old brain, yet so drilled into our psyches that, by the time we're teaching it as adults, we're more apt to teach it as "something we just do", with no real exploration or explanation of what's going on.
I made my first attempt to approach this differently today:
There were three children playing with magnets, one of whom clearly was monopolizing the majority of them. When a fourth child joined and wanted some magnets, the monopolizer was not going to budge. I watched as the fourth child distressed a little, then turned to me for help.
First, I tried scaffolding the negotiation process of simply asking to play with materials, which is a regular practice on my part. "Tina doesn't know you want to play with the magnets until you ask her. Try it like this: 'Tina, could I play with some of those magnets?' " So, the child tries by actually vocalizing her want, but still to no avail. I encouraged her to point out to Tina that she has an awful lot of magnets, and she'd just like three of them for now. Still didn't work.
That was when the epiphany came. I jumped in: "Tina, I notice Amy here would like to join you at the magnet table, and there are four chairs, so she should be able to have some magnets to play with." I get a guilty look from Tina, who is clenching her magnets.
I could take them from her, I think to myself. I could tell her to share and be done with it. But I also want to give her some agency in the situation. As I wrote before, I don't want them to share because I tell them to, but rather because they choose to.
"As far as I can tell, Tina, it seems you really want to play with ALL of those magnets. Which I can understand. Magnets are great fun. At the same time, the materials in the classroom are for ALL students to play with. That's why we have to figure out different ways to share them, like right now with the magnets.
"I've got two ideas for sharing the magnets. Tell me what you think: Either, you can share the magnets, themselves, by giving some to Amy, and then you can play for as long as you want with the magnets and with each other; or, if you really don't want to give up any of those magnets, you can share the time you have with them. I'll set a timer for five minutes, and when five minutes is up, you'll have to give all those magnets to Amy to play with, and find another place to play.
"What do you think? Share the material or share the time? It's up to you."
The key to presenting students with a choice is being ok, as the teacher, with either choice you've presented. It doesn't help to give a child an option you don't really want them to choose. In this case, I was ok with letting Tina hog the magnets for a short amount of time. I figured it would be a lesson, in and of itself, both in time and in the sacrifice of not wanting to the share the material (you don't get to play with it as long).
Tina did, indeed, choose to share the time. Unfortunately, playtime was over three minutes later - oversight on my part :( - and though Amy happily moved on to find something else after the magnet situation, I was disappointed that I didn't get a chance to follow through with Tina. However, the moment of insight was enough to get my juices going in my brain, in anticipation of other such situations, surely just a day away ...
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