the writing session as a release of tension and a way to transition to the task. The play aspect allowed the children to release energy, find creative pathways, and engage with other learners. Play allowed the children to be interactive social learners first before individually focusing on their written work. The children usually became silent while engaged in the midst of creating their creative writing pieces after a few moments of play. Levin (2003) noted that children, like Spider-Man, have an awareness that their play, even when considered aggressive, is not the same as the actual violence being imitated. Spider-Man had an attraction toward weaponry, as noted in his verbal discourse, yet he only wrote about weaponry (outer space/cannonballs) one time in the 15-week period. The group used themes involving power, weapons, and fighting behavior during their play, which I frequently observed in their creative writing. Levin (2003) explained that
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“children who use war play to help them feel more powerful and safe are the children who feel the most powerless and vulnerable” (p. 60). Children who have experienced much of their early childhood relying on others to speak for them likely have power and vulnerability issues.
Repurposing language. The children often shared words and ideas with each, creating new ideas for new purposes. The children’s use of appropriation of oral language structures, ideas, concepts, and themes resulted in a transformative act (Bakhtin &
Holquist, 1981; Maxwell, Weill, & Damico, 2017). To an observer not familiar with appropriation, it might have seemed like unimaginative mimicking. However, appropriation offered the children the chance to learn from each other’s language.
Green storm. On February 10, 2017, as the children engaged in journal writing, three children, R2D2, Thor, and Captain America, appropriated language for a novel use to talk about a green storm. The children’s cultural ways of thinking and knowing
developed on a social level first between them, and then on the individual level, inside of the children (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 57). Through a transformational change, Thor followed R2D2’s lead by retelling his own story about a green storm. Captain America followed the other two in his own variation of a story about a green storm:
R2D2: A green storm is coming.
Thor: I have a green storm. There is thunder coming and rain. Captain America: I have a green storm and a black storm. A storm came and
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Figure 5.3. Captain America reappropriates R2D2’s words as his own.
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Figure 5.4. Thor repurpose R2D2’s idea about the green storm.
Dora and Kitty used appropriation through song. During the week of February 13, 2017, I introduced the song “Zoom, Zoom,” a repetitive, simple song about space travel to the children:
Zoom, zoom, we’re going to the moon.
Zoom, zoom, zoom, we’ll get there really soon.
On February 15, 2017, Kitty drew her creative writing piece filling the page with intersecting lines, letter-like markings, and actual letters L, S, Z, A. Kitty’s story was a near-verbatim rendition of the song:
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Dora drew a large red rocket, with a large purple door on the front, and multicolored flames that emanated from the bottom. Dora similarly told a near-verbatim version of Kitty’s rendition of the song:
Dora: Zoom, zoom is going to the moon.
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Figure 5.6. Dora appropriates “Zoom, Zoom” into her own words.
Thor introduced the group to black holes. On February 28, 2017, Thor introduced the astronomy concept of black holes to the group. His drawing had a three-dimensional effect since he created a black hole in the center of his paper through the extra effort of repeated markings using his water-based markers in one spot, which made the paper’s fibers weak enough to tear:
Thor: It is a black hole. The marker got stuck in it.
During the creative writing session as I sat beside Thor, I decided to search for artists’ renditions of black holes using my smart phone so Thor could see how his drawing was similar in look and action to a factual black hole. Thor was interested in seeing the artists’ depiction of a black hole; likewise, the other children congregated around my phone screen to see this new concept. I could not show them actual black holes but only artists’
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depictions from the NASA website since the gravitational pull within a black hole is so great no light can escape, thus making black holes invisible (Smith, 2015).
Figure 5.7. Thor introduces us to black holes.
Black holes revisited. On March 8, 2017, more than a week after Thor introduced black holes to the group, Thor resurrected the topic of black holes, allowing the concept to resurface within the preschoolers’ thoughts again. Superman was one of the children who wanted to see the NASA site that depicted black holes. He discussed a distinct tale about the experiences of superheroes and villains with a black hole. In his story, he modified the traditional physicists’ concept of black holes by suggesting Batman could jump out of a black hole. Batman is a superhero, thus in Superman’s story he rightfully possessed the ability to overcome any physical limitations imposed upon humanity,
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including the gravitational pull within a black hole. Superman ended his story with, “I smart. Smartie-smartie.”
Figure 5.8. Superman repurposes the black hole theme.
On March 9, 2017, Thor repurposed the topic of black holes for his ideas, offering a distinctly different story from Superman’s version the day before. Thor’s text was about black holes, but in his story the black hole possessed the ability to accept all of the
markers. Later on March 9, from his original comment on March 8 and Thor’s comment, Superman repurposed Thor’s words making the concept of black holes his own again. Also the same day, from Thor’s comment, Captain America developed a similar story about black holes, but in Captain America’s journal, “the black hole is eating people.”
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Figure 5.11. Captain America continues the theme of black holes.
Captain America’s decision to adapt his words from Thor’s original thoughts and Superman’s thoughts as a way to reuse the words for new purposes was transformational (Bakhtin, 1981; Maxwell et al., 2017). Both Captain America and Superman transformed their own thinking through Thor’s original prompting to express a concept they had not mentioned in class prior to the March 8 and 9 dates. From their discussion that day, I was again prompted to reuse their topic to search the Internet to help them see what scientists believe a black hole might look like. Although I opened the site for Captain America, Thor, and Superman, again more than half the group came to see the image I downloaded from NASA.gov, an artist’s rendition of a black hole. In the afternoon, after the children left for the day, I searched a popular online bookstore for scientific texts about black holes developed and written for young children. I discovered they are relatively rare, with
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most texts with the black hole theme being written for late elementary-aged children. Yet, this research showed young children have an interest in the concept of black holes. Their discourse illuminated their desire and ability to create and share new ideas through piquing each other’s interests and expanding their language to produce novel concepts with relative precision. From my limited understanding of black holes, they would act as the children described, consuming anything that might venture into the gravitational pathway of the black hole (Smith, 2015). At the end, I used print referencing techniques simply to inform the children their words were important, further solidifying their language experience.
What I learned about repurposing, or appropriation of language. Appropriation