Loose Parts vs Jiggly Bits

I’ll be honest - the first time I heard the term “loose parts,” I thought, “What the …?” It’s not the kind of thing you like to think or talk about as a middle-aged woman, especially not in mixed company. It brings to mind all the jiggly bits that we struggle to get rid of, even though it’s just a war against time and gravity. Even now, I still chuckle inwardly or cringe just a little when someone mentions it.
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What are loose parts?
​However, in the field of education, it means something quite wonderful. As explained in this article, loose parts are “open-ended materials that can be combined, transported, and transformed.” They can be re-purposed, found or acquired objects. These objects can be used as a springboard for inquiry or makerspace and are a staple in Reggio or Montessori classrooms. Although loose parts have typically been incorporated with Early Childhood Education, literacy lessons, or outdoor education, there’s really no reason not to use them across the curriculum and across the grades.

Connecting to the core competencies
At the beginning of this term, I delved into Laura Fleming’s latest book, The Kickstart Guide to Making Great Makerspaces. The book includes a planning map. At first, I was going to use it as a poster in my classroom but then I thought, “No, use it.” So I set to work and added sticky notes with notes that were relevant to my practice, place, and students.

All good design begins with empathy. The first section I tackled was called, “Understand your learners.” I’m a reading intervention teacher based in an elementary school. Almost all of my students have a learning disability (LD) in reading and/or writing or have an LD profile. Some also deal with anxiety, ADD, lack of self-confidence, or speech/ hearing/ behaviour/ social issues.

So I took a look at the BC Core Competencies and decided that I really wanted/ needed to dig deep into these competencies with my students:

1. Developing a positive personal/ social/ cultural identity
   
2. Expanding our sense of social responsibility, especially building healthy, reciprocal relationships with others
   

Next steps
The next steps are what I’ve used as my framework throughout this inquiry process and what I’ve explained since the inception of this blog.

• Find children’s literature that ties into your theme or topic - fiction, non-fiction, all genres and levels - and provide these in abundance for your students to peruse and make selections.
• Use any combination of reading, writing, or making as a springboard for the next. It’s all interwoven, not linear.
  

Some of the books I gathered were:

• It’s Okay to Be Different by Todd Parr
  
• I’m Gonna Like Me by Jamie Lee Curtis and Laura Cornell
  
• The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig
  
• The Smallest Girl in the Smallest Grade by Justin Roberts
  

You can find complete book lists here and here.

We devoured these books through read-alouds, read-to-self, shared reading, and book talks. We examined these books as mentor texts and used favorite or repeating lines to help us shape our own writing. We wrote journal entries and “I statements.” We drew, we read some more, we wrote some more, we talked lots. And in the midst of all of this, we used loose parts to explore what we thought, felt, heard, learned, understood, and questioned.

Captions:

• I can be kind.
• I can be brave when I’m hurt and not cry.
• I can respect even if they are different.
• I can make this a welcoming place by smiling.
• Student’s explanation: “The big rock is the kid that got hurt. The pink button is the kid that helps him. Everything else is love and kindness all around them.”

Loose parts allow students to “mess about,” set the imagination free, and create visual representations of their learning. Tinkering with text allows children to grow as readers, writers, and compassionate learners who believe that love and kindness is all around them.