Calculating is not a problem

I invite you to know the first prize in ITWorldEdu 2008, for Excellence in Education Technology contest. It’s an experience that was been done in the Marta Mata’s kindergarten.

You must realize that in our school children begin to learn English from 3 years, but they don’t write English text in kindergarten. It’s for this reason that I have adapted to English some of texts that had been written by the kids in catalan language.

Calculating is not a problem

View more presentations from Sonia Puente.

I hope you enjoy it! And I encourage you to attend ITWorldEdu 2009 meeting, next 28, 29 and 30 october in Esadeforum. Of course, if you have some experience and you would like to have a new digital blackboard with its projector and furniture, you can participle! Look at this link.

http://www.itworldedu.cat/Front/It-Transfer/ItTansfer/_SPqxtjhL7mFlmuIHwF14h4Uk03mKxtxvdFSETjk79bv1HaatmsLw_baqBSmwsR0V

S.O.S. Children need to play in the school!

Nowadays there're a trend that Kindergarten being changed, sometimes significantly: children now spend more time being taught and tested on literacy and math skills than they do learning through play and exploration, exercising their bodies, and using their imaginations. Some abroad opinions papers, like recently published by Aliance for Chilhood, written by Miller, Edward and Almon, Joan; “Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School” says that many kindergartens use highly prescriptive curricula geared to new state standards and linked to standardized tests. In an increasing number of kindergartens, teachers must follow scripts from which they may not deviate. This is not exactly in Spain, because in our country kindergarten is not obligatory, and our pupils haven’t to pass government tests. But we are under a lot of social pressure. Families would rather their babies learn the mechanism to read first of they are be able to be creatives. Mechanic proceeding over reasoning ability. We have to be careful about these practices in our schools. People are not education professionals neither psychologists, and a lot of authors right argue that this way to teach violate long-established principles of child development and good teaching, and compromise both children's health and their long-term prospects for success in school.

Not to write at four years old doesn't mean than children will write badly in the future.

To play at four mean than children will be able to write sooner and happier when they will be physically, psychological, emotional and social well prepared to do it.

When a primary or secundary school teacher show his/her pupils to do something, they don't learn it only because their teacher is magnificent. Children gain kindergarten and primary school bases, and education bases are grounds in play.

In fact, to play in the school not only is important. To play in the school is essential and, consequently, we have to restore and increase child-initiated play and experiential learning to a central role in kindergarten education.

Really, if we are talking about early childhood education, we can't forget the educational value of group games for the young child's social and intellectual development, suggesting ways to select or modify both new and familiar games to make them more appropriate for children's learning. To talk about it we have to have a theoretical introduction to what is meant by good group games and to why, according to some acknowledge psychological and pedagogic theories, these games have tremendous educational value. After that, in some books like Group Games in Early Education: Implications of Piaget's Theory, that was written by Kamii, Constance and DeVries, Rhetat; we will be able to find some details about the teacher's actions in these games, and some specific directions for playing many variations of eight basic types of games: aiming, races, chasing, hiding, guessing, cards, verbal commands, and board games. The issue of competition in group games it is important, like the discussion of educators' reasons for objecting to competition in group games, ways in which competitive games can contribute to children's development, and principles of teaching competitive group games. There are a great among of books about group games, but it's important to bear something in mind: pointers for each type of game are connected with the major pedagogical concepts of psychological and pedagogic theories.

Teachers have nowadays an oportunity in front of public oppinion. At a brisk pace, research findings focused on children's play are finally reaching the light of day in popular media.

No longer left sitting in archives of academic journals, the benefits of play to lifelong success have been touted in radio, television, magazines, and newspapers. It gives early childhood professionals a powerful, credible advocacy tool to use with parents and community leaders as they strive to put children's play back into the heart of early childhood curriculum. In "A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool: Presenting the Evidence," (Stephens, Karen. The Early Childhood Leaders' Magazine Since 1978, n186 p53 Mar-Apr 2009) a review of research confirms that children's self-initiated play nurtures overall development, not just cognitive development (such as learning to name colors, numbers, or shapes). In fact, research builds a very strong case that childhood play is a required experience in order to become a civilized, fully-realized human being. In Stephen’s article, the author discusses some points which are upheld by research about important play outcomes. Abundant research has shown that play during early childhood is necessary if humans are to reach their full potential. For children, and in fact, for society's well-being, true play is a critical need, not a fanciful frill. And so it requires ethical early childhood programs to advocate for and insist upon including play as part of their daily curriculum and teaching strategy. This article concludes with some recommendations for achieving that goal.

Best practice is based on knowledge--not on beliefs or guesses--about how children learn and develop. Families have to trust in teachers professionalism and we must defend our knowledge tooth and nail. We can't hand over education afairs to the public opinion. Children's social, emotional, cognitive and physical developments education is too important for this.

Cooperatives groups, a way to make him or her feel well about him or herself.

In kinder garden it is important to provide our pupils some strategies to get information. In fact, between teachers it is very common to talk about learn to learn. How can we teach to learn? In kindergarten we just put the basis, do you remember?

One way to teach our little pupils strategies to learn for themselves is cooperative work.

Before to start to work in this way we have to allow children work in pairs, in groups of three or four persons, on his or her own, in pairs again,… It’s very important than the kids know well the others and themselves.

We must take into account that little pupils are self-centred, and it is for this reason that to work in groups is very difficult for them. But it is very beneficial both subjects learns and self-confidence.

It’s a good idea to distribute workmates in tables with no more than six children in each one. The work teams have to be members of his/her table. It’s necessary to change the table partners from time to time.

When pupils have been at ease among them, we can think about to introduce the cooperatives work from this moment on.

To work in cooperatives groups it is interesting that children choose which group they want to be a member of, because to reach an agreement isn’t easy at all.

When they know their classmates and themselves, they could decide to belong to a cooperative group with responsibility.

When kids work in groups they learn early the importance of being a member of a great group. Then this work methodology forces them to work well, because they need to be chosen.

Always that the little pupils change their work-team, teachers have to plan some first very easy works in order they feel well and relaxed in the new group. Step by step we could introduce them in mosaic work, the most difficult way of work in kindergarten, but the top way to learn to learn.

It consist in to divide the different parts of the assignments between the different teams. For example, if we are studying an artist, one group could work about his childhood, another about his maturity years, a third group about his pictures, another one about his sculptures,… When each group has finished its investigation, they should practice how to put forward. It’s important that the members of every group assign each person a part of the presentation, but it’s absolutely necessary that they work as a team. Sometimes one or more of them have to help a member in the group, in the same way that some workmate will have to help him or her. It allows them to get closer.

Teachers have to keep an eye on every child to guarantee everybody is ok. This kind of work is very open and often kids feel too much responsibility in themselves, which it is very stressing. It is essential that teachers pay special attention to pupils feeling.

But the role of the teacher isn’t only to take care of children emotions. We have to do a hard work to prepare very well a lot of didactic material, because world recourses aren’t adapted for little pupils. We have to research information with them and almost immediately we have to give them in converted form.

It is hard, but it is a good way to teach to learn and it is a way too to make him or her feel well about him or herself.

Kindergarten versus Primary.

The way of teaching in Kindergarten reflect Gestalt Psychology. The fundamental formula of Gestalt theory might be expressed in the word ‘globalization’. Max Wertheimer is one of the most importants Gestalt's psychologists. He thought that human thinking is based in comprehensives meaningful perceptions, not in collections of combined pictures. In consequence, we only could break a comprehensive perception through an artificial analysis. In other words: when the subject memorizes by studying the whole selection, the details are organized into a total configuration, each element in its proper relationship; the subject who uses the part method learns a jumble of details which have no organization.

In Wertheimer words: “There are wholes, the behaviour of which is not determined by that of their individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. It is the hope of Gestalt theory to determine the nature of such wholes” (1924). Then, some important pedagogues adapted Wertheimer studies to the teaching. Decroly, for example, observed that children learn by means of all the senses.

In kindergarten we put a lot of real experiences within reach of the children without separate in subjects. For example, we can teach astronomy planning a party in where the children have to make cookies done to solar system scale. When they are reading the recipe, they are learning language. When they are counting how many planets have to make, they are learning maths. When they are talking about the colour of every planet/cookie, they are learning natural sciences. When they are talking about the flavour of the cookies, they are learning about their selves,…

Generally, in primary school the timetable is divided in subjects. You can make cookies too, but it is not as easy as in kindergarten, because you have to adapt your teaching to a strict timetable, already in primary stage pupils are taught by more teachers. Language class, for example, can be at early morning, after it, children have to learn spanish with a different teacher, later, maths with the tutor again, but maybe the timetable doesn't contain natural sciences this day, for example… The way to draw up a programme is so different, and the activities are not so making with their hands.

The majority of schools use a different method to teach in kindergarten and in primary school. But sometimes kindergarten adopts primary methods, even it is unusual that primary uses kindergarten methodology. Those schools are the most interesting, though. In general, when a school adopts globalization methodology, teachers have to make their own didactic material, because books publishing only make more common textbooks, and it is the books that use the great majority of schools, that is to say, one book for every different subject. When the majority of teachers in a school makes a decision that entails so work, you can be sure that they are hard workers and, in consequence, we can say that one primary stage that doesn’t follow kindergarten methodology can teach with responsibility, but one primary school that follows kindergarten methodology is sure that teach well.

It is very important for the kids that teachers make a bridge between kindergarten and primary methodology. In this way I think that it is a very good option to have a staff with more teachers with kindergarten degree than just the necessaries. It allows that teachers accompany pupils getting in the primary stage. Don’t doubt that it is warmer for the children.

Every child is a neon sign that says "PRECAUTION!"

Kinder Garden or Primary School?




Both stages are very interesting from my point of view. Today I will speak about Kinder Garden learning, and I will do through Robert Fulghum.

All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten


by Robert Fulghum- an excerpt from the book, All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten





All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten. ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:



Share everything.

Play fair.

Don't hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don't take things that aren't yours.

Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.

Be aware of wonder.

Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.

And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggestword of all - LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation.Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government oryour world and it holds true and clear and firm.

Think what a better world it would be if all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down withour blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had a basic policy to always put thing back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old youare - when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

© Robert Fulghum, 1990. Found in Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, Villard Books: New York, 1990, page 6-7.

What would you like to speak about?

Dear bloggers, I’m pleased to share with you this little window to our kinder garden. I would love to give you a real vision of the reality in the little kinder school. Then, I invite you to draw back the curtains to see whatever you fancy.

Once a week, teachers of the same course program together, and when we design the different activities and we allocate them in the timetable we bear in mind a lot of factors. We work coordinates with all the kinder garden teachers as well with the all the school teacher.

To work as a team is not easy. We have to explain our opinions, sometimes we have to convince others teachers than our idea is best and the most common it is to have to negotiate some agreement. But this hard and ordinary work is an enriching experience that became us better professionals.

I can explain you some decisions that we have made in relation to psychology in the kinder garden, and more exactly, about getting from kinder garden though primary stage. But I have to decide which decision will be more interesting for your knowledge, and I don’t know too much about you.

My greatest wish is to make an interactive blog. In my first post I just introduced some ideas about psychology in the kinder garden. In my second post I talked about getting through primary stage. And from now on I would like to do a tailor-made blog. May be you don’t know exactly what do you want to know. To be easier, in this third post I’ll do some options to develop, if you are agree.

I propose you to talk about cooperatives groups, one method work that allows us to promote the group cohesion.





I suggest explain how we use the traveller folders to communicate to the families the progress of their daughters/sons systematically. It is a good way to improve the communication with our pupils’ parents at the same time that it promotes better learning or even higher test scores.







How long is in top shape the time to teach the same group? Is it optimum to be all the kinder garden stage with the same group of pupils? Is it possible gets though primary stage holding our pupils’ hands? Could the same teacher be a tutor of a group of pupils in P5 and then be again in first of Primary? Would be a good idea?

You can write a comment about your preferences if you want. It is not obligatory, of course, but it is an opportunity to know all the things that you can interest about kinder garden and primary school. If you aren't brave enough to give your opinion, don't worry, I'll go on with the subjects
that I think that may be could be more interesting for you.

We’ll read us!