Term 3 Week 2 Newsletter

What Is The Moral In The Story Of “The Little Red Hen”

A recent event from class life gave a wonderful insight into the psyche, maturity and reasoning abilities of the children in Room 4. It was one of those unplanned teaching moments that as a teacher you can’t orchestrate, but pick up on because you perceive that it may be a valuable and memorable life lesson for the children.
As part of our shared reading program I read the traditional story of The Little Red Hen. You probably know it … The Little Red finds a grain of wheat and plants it. The wheat grows, is harvested, ground into flour and then baked into bread. During the process she asks for help from the dog, cat and pig with a “Who will help me …..?” To which the response is “Not I …”
When the bread is finally baked the Hen asks, “Who will help me eat the bread?” to which the other animals quickly respond “I will!”. The hen’s response is to say that since they didn’t help with the work they wouldn’t get any of the bread.
I asked the children the moral of the story and most grasped the idea that if you want the benefits you need to put in the work. However there are some other moral lessons that can be drawn from the story. I asked the children several questions. “What did the hen find?” “What do hens eat?”
“If hens eat grain, why didn’t she eat the grain of wheat she found?”
The challenge for me was to take the moral about benefits of delayed gratification and make it practical and understandable for the children. An “ah-ha” moment occurred for me. I had a bag of mints and as it was just on lunchtime I gave each child a choice. They could have one mint immediately OR, if they waited until the end of school they could have two mints. The dilemma was reflected on the faces and comments made to their peers as they wrestled with what they would decide. As there was an obvious benefit from waiting, (delayed gratification) most children made that choice. However some children just couldn’t wait and chose to settle for having the one mint immediately.
This got me thinking about children’s thinking and attitudes not only about life situations but also about learning, and how this might tie into the theory of learning. I wonder if this is where there is a place for incorporating some “Habits of Mind” teaching, something that parents can also pick up on at home. A Habit of Mind means having a disposition toward behaving intelligently when confronted with problems, the answers to which are not immediately known: dichotomies, dilemmas, enigmas and uncertainties.
You can read about the 16 Habits of Mind identified by Costa and Kallick on
www.habits-of-mind.net.
One of these habits is “managing impulsivity” which I see as having to the concept of delayed gratification. This ability to manage impulsiveness and delay an immediate reward for long term gain is a valuable life skill.

THINK SPOT:
Can you recall a practical example of this for yourself?

What can families do to help their children manage impulsivity? How might this skill or attitude help a child with their learning?

Have a great week,
Peter Corlett