Objects to Learn about and Objects for Learning 1

7Educational Posters in Kindergarten: A School Object that May Be a Differentiator?

7.1. Introduction

Figure 7.1. The little train of the week depicting the days in the week in French from Monday to Sunday

Nowadays, at kindergarten, some pupils talk about school objects in the same way as they customarily talk about objects from everyday life. When asked about the meaning of the little train of the days of the week, an emblematic poster used in nursery classes to teach how to say the date (see Figure 7.1), it is not uncommon for these pupils to mistake the nature of the “little train” object. The implicit function of this poster is to introduce young pupils to literacy practices¹: the orderly, linear arrangement of different colored wagons symbolizes the temporal division of the week into days; although facing in the opposite direction to the conventional reading direction, the locomotive marks the beginning of the line of stickers on which are written the names of the days to be memorized. In the guise of a mundane childish illustration, this object is indeed a learning object. The pupils who, for the most part, develop naturally at this age in the material, emotional world of orality (Laparra and Margolinas 2016)², spontaneously mobilize the representation of the train they know (“that goes ‘chuffa chuffa’”, as they say) to attribute a meaning to this object. Therein lies ...