Developing Children's Awareness and Appreciation of themselves and Others as Knowledge Creators

Developing children’s awareness and appreciation of themselves and others as knowledge creators presents a challenge to the teacher in having to recognise the opportunities as they arise. There is so often the call for personalisation of learning and lip service is paid to the importance of learning beyond the curriculum and the knowledge the children have. The opportunity is rarely taken to value the knowledge a child has created beyond the confines of the curriculum or the classroom, or the links they make between their own knowledge and different contexts. Claire shows what can happen when a teacher opens the space for children to create new knowledge, recognise its value, help each other articulate those links and offer their thinking to others. Floor books are an excellent way for the comments, photographs and work of the children on a topic to be stored.