29 Designing teaching learning material in ECCE

N. Dhanya

A few guidelines about developmentally appropriate practices. The first practice is about

1. Creating a caring community of learners

A.The early childhood setting functions as a community of learners in which all participants consider and contribute to each other’s well-being and learning.

B.Relationships are an important context through which children develop and learn. Children construct their understandings about the world around them through interactions with other members of the community Opportunities to play together, collaborate on investigations and projects, and talk with peers and adults enhance children’s

C.Social relationships are an important context for learning. Each child has strengths or interests that contribute to the overall functioning of the group. When children have opportunities to play together, work on projects in small groups, and talk with other children and adults, their own development and learning are enhanced. Interacting with other children in small groups provides a context for children to operate on the edge of their developing capacities. The learning environment enables children to construct understanding through interactions with adults and other children.

D.The learning environment is designed to protect children’s health and safety and is supportive of children’s physiological needs for activity, sensory stimulation, fresh air, rest, and nourishment. The program provides a balance of rest and active movement for children throughout the program day. Outdoor experiences are provided for children of all ages. The program protects children’s psychological safety; that is, children feel secure, relaxed, and comfortable rather than disengaged, frightened, worried, or stressed.

E.Children are experience an organized environment and an orderly routine that provided an overall structure in which learning takes place; the environment is dynamic and changing but predictable and comprehensible from a child’s point of view. The learning environment provides a variety of materials and opportunities for children to have firsthand, meaningful experiences.

Let’s now understand how Teaching can be used to enhance development and learning

Adults are responsible for ensuring children’s healthy development and learning. From birth, relationships with adults are critical determinants of children’s healthy social and emotional development and serve as well as mediators of language and intellectual development. At the same time, children are active constructors of their own understanding, who benefit from initiating and regulating their own learning activities and interacting with peers. Therefore, early childhood teachers strive to achieve an optimal balance between children’s self-initiated learning and adult guidance or support.

Teachers accept responsibility for actively supporting children’s development and provide occasions for children to acquire important knowledge and skills. Teachers use their knowledge of child development and learning to identify the range of activities, materials, and learning experiences that are appropriate for a group/or individual child. This knowledge is used in conjunction with knowledge of the context and understanding about individual children’s growth patterns, strengths, needs, interest, and experiences to design the curriculum and learning environment and guide teacher’s interactions with children.

Let’s see what is the role of teachers in making decisions about practice:

A.Teachers respect, value, and accept children and treat them with dignity at all times.

B.Teachers make it a priority to know enhance children’s each child well.

1.Teachers establish positive, personal relationships with children to foster the child’s development and keep informed about the child’s needs and potentials. Teachers listen to children and adapt their responses to children’s differing needs, interests, styles, and abilities.

2.Teachers continually observe children’s spontaneous play and interaction with the physical environment and with other children to learn about their interests, abilities, and developmental progress. On the basis of this information, teachers plan experiences that enhance children’s learning and development.

3.Understanding that children develop and learn in the context of their families and communities, teachers establish relationships with families that increase their knowledge of children’s lives outside the classroom and their awareness of the perspectives and priorities of those individuals most significant in the child’s life.

4.Teachers are alert to signs of undue stress and traumatic events in children’s lives and aware of effective strategies to reduce stress and support the development of resilience.

5.Teachers are responsible at all times for all children under their supervision and plan for children’s increasing development of self-regulation abilities.

C.Teachers create an intellectually engaging, responsive environment to promote each child’s learning and development.

1.Teachers use their knowledge about children in general and the particular children in the group as well as their familiarity with what children need to learn and develop in each curriculum area to organize the environment and plan curriculum and teaching strategies.

2.Teachers provide children with a rich variety of experiences, projects, materials, problems, and ideas to explore and investigate, ensuring that these are worthy of children’s attention.

3.Teachers provide children with opportunities to make meaningful choices and time to explore through active involvement. Teachers offer children the choice to participate in a small-group or a solitary activity, assist and guide children who are not yet able to use and enjoy child-choice activity.

4.Teachers organize the daily and weekly schedule and allocate time so as to provide children with extended blocks of time in which to engage in play, projects, and/or study in integrated curriculum.

D.Teachers make plans to enable children to attain key curriculum goals across various disciplines, such as language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, art, music, physical education, and health (see “Constructing curriculum,”pp.20-21).

1. Teachers incorporate a wide variety of experiences, materials and equipment, and teaching strategies in constructing curriculum to accommodate a broad range of children’s individual differences in prior experiences, maturation rates, styles of learning, needs and interests.

2. Teachers bring each child’s home culture and language into the shared culture of the school so that the unique contributions of each group are recognized and valued by others.

3. Teachers are prepared to meet identified special needs of individual children, including children with disabilities and those who exhibit unusual interests and skills. Teachers use all the strategies identified here, consult with appropriate specialists, and see that the child gets the specialized services he or she requires.

E. Teachers foster children’s collaboration with peers on interesting, import enterprises.

1. Teachers promote children’s productive collaboration without taking over to the extent that children lose interest.

2. Teachers use a variety of ways of flexibility grouping children for the purpose of instruction, supporting collaboration among children, and building a sense of community. At various times, children have opportunities to work individually, in small groups, and with the whole group.

F. Teachers develop, refine, and use a wide repertoire of teaching strategies to enhance children’s learning and development.

1. To help children develop their initiative, teachers encourage them to choose and plan their own learning activities.

2.Teachers pose problems, ask questions, and make comments and suggestions that stimulate children’s thinking and extend their learning.

3. Teachers extend the range of children’s interests and the scope of their thought through presenting novel experiences and introducing stimulating ideas, problems, experiences, or hypotheses.

4. To sustain an individual child’s effort or engagement in purposeful activities, teachers select from a range of strategies, including but not limited to modeling, demonstrating specific skills, and providing information, focused attention, physical proximity, verbal encouragement, reinforcement and other behavioural procedures, as well as additional structure and modification of equipment or schedules as needed.

5.  Teachers coach and/or directly guide children in the acquisition of specific skills as needed.

6. Teachers calibrate the complexity and challenge of activities to suit children’s level of skill and knowledge, increasing the challenge as children gain competence and understanding.

7.Teachers provide cues and other forms of “scaffolding” that enable the child to succeed in a task that is just beyond his or her ability to complete alone.

8.To strengthen children’s sense of competence and confidence as learners, motivation to persist, and willingness to take risks, teachers use various strategies that encourage children to reflect on and “revisit” their learning experiences.

G.    Teachers facilitate the development of responsibility and self-regulation in children.

1.Teachers set clear, consistent, and fair limits for children’s behavior and hold children accountable to standards of acceptable behavior. To the extent that children are able, teachers engage them in developing rules and procedures for behavior of class members.

2.Teachers redirect children to more acceptable behavior or activity or use children’s mistakes as, learning opportunities, patiently reminding children of rules and their rationale as needed.

3.Teachers listen and acknowledge children’s feelings and frustrations, respond with respect, guide children to resolve conflicts, and model skills that help children to solve their own problems.

PLANNING LEARNING FOR PRESCHOOLERS

When planning learning for young children, there are several ideas to consider. First, it is especially important to provide activities and themes suited to the age and individual needs of each child. Second, carefully think about each of the following elements while planning.

Age appropriateness

The curriculum should be suitable for the developmental level of each age group and should offer a range of activities. Set group goals after assessing the needs of a particular age group.

Individual appropriateness

Children follow similar growth patterns, but the time frame for each child differs. Individual interests, abilities and family background must be understood before you can meet the needs of each child. Goals and objectives should be set for each child.

Learning is best when new information builds on old knowledge. Planning should center on the child, the family and the child’s everyday experiences. As the child develops and grows more independent, he or she becomes less self-centered. This leads to expanding teaching plans.

Family and culture

Activities should be planned with respect to families and cultural background of children. Children should not be separated from their family and culture. Some families may choose to be very involved, and some may choose not to.

Teacher values

Teacher must also plan considering her own policies, interests, values and personal philosophy.

Transitions

Transitions are times that occur between activities and can disrupt the flow of play. Avoid too many transitions, and give children enough time to get involved in their play. A skillful teacher plans carefully to ensure that transition times are smooth.

Modes of learning and teaching

Learning through books

Phonological awareness or phonological sensitivity is the ability to recognize and distinguish the sounds and patterns of spoken language. When this awareness develops, children learn the separate sounds of spoken language that are blended in ordinary speech. For some children, distinguishing the parts of spoken language is difficult.

Phonological awareness is an important skill in learning to read. Children typically begin to demonstrate this awareness by about age 3, and their skills improve gradually over many years (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Phonological sensitivity is a strong predictor of later reading, writing, and spelling ability (National Early Literacy Panel, 2004, 2008). Instruction that strengthens children’s phonological awareness has been shown to contribute to later reading success (Ehri et al., 2001; National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). Children become phonologically aware through experiences such as reciting poems, singing, and clapping the syllables of chanted words (Adams, 1990, 2001; Carroll, Snowing, Hulme, & Stevenson, 2003; Strickland &Schickedanz, 2004). Phonological awareness skills are typically learned in a particular order (Anthony, Lonigan, Driscoll, Phillips, & Burgess, 2003). However, children acquire these skills in an overlapping sequence rather than by mastering one level before the next (Dickinson &Neuman, 2006). Children who are learning two or more languages must learn very different sound systems (Gonzalez, 1998). They must distinguish English phonemes that may not be part of their native languages. A child may therefore have difficulty hearing and/or producing the sounds of English.

It is important for young children to:

• Recognize print in their surroundings. Understand that print carries meaning.
• Know that print is used for many purposes. Experience print through exploratory writing.
• Children learn about print by seeing many examples. In your classroom, these examples should include:
• Books and other printed materials for the children to look at and pretend to read. For every young children, have soft-covered and board books that are washable.
• Photographs and pictures with captions and labels.
• Posters, calendars, and bulletin board displays that feature print. Labels and signs for special areas of the classroom.
• In addition, you should also have available a variety of props with printed letters and words for the children to use in dramatic play. Here are a few suggestions:
• Menus, order pads, and play money.
• Recipes, empty food cartons, and marked plastic measuring spoons and cups. Old telephone books, memo pads, envelopes, and address labels.
• Price tags, stickers, and large paper bags (with printed words).
• Toy cars, trucks, and farm and construction equipment (with printed words).

TYPES OF BOOKS FOR READING ALOUD

Alphabet books: Alphabet books usually consist of capital and lowercase forms of a letter on each page with pictures of something that begins with the most common sound that the letter represents.

Counting (or number) books: this book features one number and shows a corresponding number of items

Concept book: Concept books deals particular concepts such as colour, shapes, sizes, opposites, classifying concepts etc that children need to know in order to succeed in school.

Nursery rhymes: These books often contain rhymes and repeated verses. These are easy to remember and recite.

Repetitious stories and pattern books: These books feature a word or phrase which is repeated throughout the story and thereby it forms a pattern. After the first few pages are your children may be able to ‘read along’ because they know the pattern this ability will let them experience the pleasure of reading.

Traditional literature: Traditional literatures include beloved stories for kids such as fairy tales, folktales, fables, myths, and legends from around the world and across the ages of time. These books are helpful for children to become familiarized with children become familiar with many different times, cultures, and traditions.

Wordless picture book: These are wordless picture books which narrate stories only through pictures These books give children the opportunity to tell stories themselves in sequence and to develop language skills.

As well as using games and stories a few other things need to be taken into consideration:

Preschool children have small attention spans so change your activities every five minutes or so because if they go longer than that, they’ll start getting restless and you’ll spend more time trying to keep their attention than actually doing the activity.

Teach a small amount of language in any given session. For this age group, try to introduce three words at a time and then add to the list as you see the children understand the meaning of the words you’ve already introduced.

Engage the children on multiple levels. This includes using fine and large motor movement, singing, talking, listening and looking. For example, you could have a game where the children need to move around the room to stand next to a picture or object of the word they heard you say.

Competition in the preschool classroom causes undue stress on the children. Avoid playing games or doing activities that have winners and losers. Either have the class work together to “win” as a group or do not distinguish between winning and losing. On the same note, be sure to be supportive and encouraging to all of the learners in your class.

Preschool children can get very excitable games with quiet ones to balance out the energy level in the classroom.

Preschoolers are very visual. Bring in real objects whenever possible. When it is not possible, find colorful and vivid pictures.

Preschooler children usually are not yet reading and writing (at least not to large extent) in their own language, so don’t expect them to do it in a second language. At this age, you can expect them to listen and understand first. After a while, they will begin speaking individual words and short phrases.

Themes well work in the preschool classroom. Focus your vocabulary learning on groups of similar types of words such as foods, colors, numbers, animals, families and body parts. You can work in short phrases that are relevant to your theme.

Be well prepared; plan more than you think you will use quiet activities when the children need some downtime.

Repeat, review and revise. You need to frequently review the vocabulary that you’ve previously taught them or they will quickly forget it.

If you have a particularly naughty or rough student in the class, keep him or her close to you. Ask him or her to be your special helper and be sure to give a lot of praise when you see him or her behaving appropriately.

LEARNING THROUGH MUSIC

Preschool period is the time when children explore themselves through play.The substance of play in very young children is usually comprised of the environmental objects and experiences to which they have been exposed. If the music environment is sufficiently rich, there will be a continuous and ever richer spiral of exposure to new musical elements followed by the child’s playful experimentation with these elements.

The importance of music instruction for music development during the early years of childhood has been widely investigated since World War II. THE Pillsbury studies (1937-1958) (Moorhead and Pond, 1977) provides the first glimpse into preschool children’s musical lives and informed us about the nature of their spontaneous music behavior. Characteristic music performances of young children provide a window through which music psychologists and educators can understand the sequence of the child’s developing music skills.

Music can strengthen children’s minds and serve as a fundamental skill of learning.Music develops children’s sense of patterning and memory skill. Some say music “nourishes children’s brains”. Music stimulates brain connections and can actually make children smarter.

SENSORY TRAINING

Sensory training is not a particular activity, but takes place throughout the day. But there are some exercises and things that can be done in this area to teach a child perception, observation, fine discrimination, and classification. Children develop their sense of logic and concentration through sensory training begins at preschool age 3 years old through 5 years.

 1. Discrimination of length, width and height

2. Discrimination of volume

3. Discrimination in multiple dimensions

4. Discrimination among color tones

5. Discrimination among geometric shapes for shape and size.

6. Discrimination among solid geometric shapes by sight and touch

7.  Solving of puzzles

8. Discrimination of intensity and nature of sounds

9. Discrimination among musical tones

10.Discrimination of texture by touch

11. Discrimination of weight by touch

12.Discrimination of temperature by touch

13.Discrimination of scents

Sensory training helps children to:

1. Keen observation of the world around them.

2. Culinary discrimination

3.Aesthetic and musical appreciation

4.Appreciation of architecture.

STORY TELLING

The child develops skill in the language arts as it participates in various experiences and activities. One activity can contribute to growth in several of the arts and for that reason, activities have not been labeled as appropriate for reading, speaking, listening or writing. Certain activities have not been labeled for pre-primary school or kindergarten, because of the wide range of individual differences from group to group. Using information pertaining to development and experience of the children, the teacher can select and adapt the activity most appropriate to them.

Story telling is an activity of great interest to children everywhere. Due to structural changes in the family, the traditional responsibility teacher. Although the content of story may vary from generation to generation the values and objectives may remain the same.

RHYMES

Rhymes lay the foundation of music. The rhythmic patterns are joyful and appealing to children. These are also easy to remember and help the child to gain mastery over languages.

CREATIVE ACTIVITIES

Each individual perceives the situation in his own manner reacts to it on the basis of his experiences, imaginations and original thoughts. On account of these qualities, man creates new horizon and sets new standards. Creativity actually involves something newer act least rare and useful and is so complex and multi-dimensional that each thinker considers in different dimensions.

Science Experiments in Pre-Primary School

Understanding scientific concepts are very important in today’s world. Now-a-days every action is based on science. A child may ask too many question related to science out of their inquisitiveness to know things. It is the duty of teacher to patiently answer those question .Raising questions by the child reflects its intellectual development and curiosity to know the world around.

Giving science concepts at the pre-primary school aims at helping the child develop the concepts which will keep it safe from the hazards of environment. The child watches, wonders, studies and questions as it experiences science child’s curiosity, to know more about surroundings. Teaching science at the pre-school level so the needs for scientific attitude.

LEARNING THROUGH PLAY

Play is spontaneous, self-initiated and brings sheer contentment for every child. Through play a child develops develop his mind and body, integrating social and emotional functions and the intellectual functions of thinking, reasoning, problem solving, talking and imagining.

Conclusion

Play differs from work which is an actively towards on and in which the individual carry out the activity not because he wants the end result. Piaget describes play as a form of adaptation through assimilation. Indeed the principle business of childhood, it is the vehicle of improvisation and combination, the first carrier of rate systems through which a world of cultural restraints replaces the operation of childish impulses (Burner, 1975). In play there is a realization of effort; a child exercise, solidifies and extends reaction pattern that have emerged during the course of his development. In play situation, the child decides his own action and become aware that every object and action has a meaning.

Web Links:

• www.ascd.org
• www.ncte-india.org