If many children do something altogether, most of the time it happens like only active children attend the activity and more passive ones are just looking. To avoid such a situation, we were planning to make up groups of a small number of children. On that day of the program, however, much more children came to join us than we had expected. But our staffs or activity materials were only for 10 groups at most. It was our first big task to divide them into 10 groups.
Depending on a location where children were sitting, we could roughly divide them up into 10. But the teacher who interpreted for us was methodical and she chose a way to let children speak out a number from 1 to 10 and let them gather up according to their numbers.
Children said their numbers in order, but some got ahead and said the same number as the friend in their front. Several times we needed to make sure with them to wait carefully until they hear what their friends in front say.
We also needed to remind them repeatedly to remember their own numbers. Otherwise smaller children tend to focus too much on what others are saying and then forget their own numbers. Our interpreting teacher, while children were numbering, suddenly picked a child to ask which number he/she belongs to as well as tested by letting children of a particular number raise their hands.
There were a lot of children in the classroom and only to divide children into small groups took a long time. Nonetheless, this seemingly simple task to recognize a right timing (to take an action) and to keep short-time memory are parts of basic behaviors in a life. The fact that it took time indicates that children needed that much instructions. And since we made it eventually, this was a meaningful time, we thought.
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