It is important to always put the child first and make your lesson based on where the children are with their learning abilities. A few ways to get students to focus may involve:
- Make sure students know your expectations
- When they are ready and you are ready to start
- “eyes on me, one, two, three”
- have all of their attention before you start
Many teachers are hesitate on the idea of "child's play", however play is crucial in children development. It allows children to explore and identify objects and situations by themselves.
An interesting article, " It's Child's Play", outlines the importance of a play based classroom, which identifies play is the independent work of children.
The "REGGIO EMILIA APPROACH" is based on a type of learning that is hmm....elegant? This was my first reaction when watching a movie on this approach to learning (this is a good one to GOOGLE).
During class, we also watch a video called " The Little School", this took place in a kindergarten classroom. I would reflect upon this video as being very influential. The teacher took into consideration the child as a learner. While the child did not want to participate in activities, the teacher made an effort to discuss with the boy what was wrong. Sometimes it is hard to focus on one child in a classroom, however it is important to develop rapport with each child.
One more reflection, PROMISE! When I was a marketing coordinator for the Brock University Students Union, it was my role to advertise and market events and businesses on campus. This is very similar to advertising for children in a kindergarten room. You may ask, how?
Well, an activity that our class did was to use our senses (taste, smell, and touch) and look at a fruit tray. As a group, we all used our senses (first was taste haha) to investigate what it felt like, tasted like, and looked like.
Our teacher than showed us pictures of fruit on a black scale, which did not make the fruit as pleasuarable then the taste. We were then asked to write down words to describe our fruit.
The end GOAL: you need to make sure colour, shape and texture is involved in your lessons. Children like visual and tactile images. This is also used as a marketing technique for many companies and businesses.
Many of these "kindergarten reflections" may be a little longer than my other blogs but they are filled with useful information on effectively reaching out to kindergarten students :)
