EXPLORING THE WORLD FROM MY CLASSROOM

 

“Today’s children have the potential of making the world a better place tomorrow”

Early childhood education can play an essential role in preparing young learners for later success in life.

I deal with preprimary kids and I believe in making my teaching strategy fit for my learners. My classroom is a place where kids can express, enjoy, learn, create, explore and set examples for others. I try to work keeping in mind the need of every individual. Exploring new things is an essential part of how a young child learns to relate to others and to the things around them. Starting even before birth, babies begin to develop the ability to think, draw conclusions, make predictions, look for explanations, and even conduct experiments to understand their surroundings. I strongly believe that “the child should not be made to fit the teaching instead teaching should be molded according to the child”. I try to my teaching versatile for my students so that they not only learn the academic part but also able to deal with the day today situations with an ease.

 

Students need to be aware of cultural norms and differences around the world so that they can succeed and thrive. I try to inculcate moral values

,life skills and awareness of the world in my students to make them a responsible citizen.

 

MY TEACHING PHILOSOPHY:

Every Child is Unique and like Albert Einstein said “ If you gauge a fish by its ability to fly, it will spend rest of its life thinking it is a fool” I adhere to this belief and incorporate it my teaching philosophy. Another value I strongly believe in is

LEARNING BY DOING :Over the course of time, I have come to believe that children learn best through experiential learning .

They learn by watching, listening, interacting and experimenting with their peer group.

Being a compassionate and adaptable teacher, I try to model my teaching process as per the needs and traits of each child.

I try to provide them the roots, firmly embedded in the soil of moral values and discipline, as well as wings, which will help them to soar to unimaginable heights of creativity and success, thereby spreading the message of love and peace.

ENVIRONMENT IN MY CLASSROOM:

I try to provide a developmentally appropriate environment in my classroom where children explore and learn. I make use of various Montessori materials, toys, loose parts to add an element of exploring. The idea behind using different material is to enrich the classroom experience for the children and help them relate concepts taught to their environment. This helps in bringing curiosity driven learning while making the entire process enjoyable and fun. Ample time is given to children for exploration with material to encourage out of the box thinking, so that they can enhance their creativity. Learning is supported by various activities and material that engage the children. Since I try to address every child’s unique learning style, independent exploration is encouraged after the lesson plan has been delivered to enhance their learning experience.

Activities: Introducing Science in preschool-

Science helps preschoolers to be aware and make sense of the world around them and to appropriately adapt their environment. Science activities help children observe, question, explore, analyze and describe items from their environment. It builds a logical and problem-solving temperament amongst the students.

*Simple Gravity Experiment-

* Experimenting with the changing shape of water.

* Mixing primary colours to make secondary colours.

 

 

 

Nature walk

This activity is an excellent way to stimulate a child's appreciation for the natural world. When we go out for a nature walk I ask students to tell what they see, hear, smell or feel .Also I encourage them to feel the texture of rocks, barks of trees, and dried up leaves.

Germination-

Children learn how a plant grows, so they were encouraged to sow a seed and water it regularly to see the process of germination.

 

 

 

Role Plays

Role Plays helps nurture a child’s imagination; improves their social skills, creativity and develops their intellectual abilities. This area is an excellent tool that I use for students benefit to help children learn many valuable lessons as well as giving them an opportunity to understand how the real world works by letting them act out the following.

Real life experiences such as travelling in a bus or visiting a shop or visiting a garden. Every day scenarios at home such as cooking in the kitchen or dressing up dolls. Imaginary situations such as visiting the underwater creatures, visiting the moon

Self-awareness Sessions- To make children aware of their emotions, good touch-bad touch, their parents contact numbers and their likes and dislikes, I had planned various activities such as personal diary of each child, worksheets and media on smart board to show stranger is danger.

Introducing of Music and Movement for teaching various topics

– Various medias were added in smartboard to teach different concepts through music and moment which helps to make teaching and learning a great experience for kids.

Enjoying Weather & Seasons Science- During the rainy season when it was drizzling students were taken out to enjoy rain and were shown earth worms. In winters, we planned our activities in sunlight. In hot summers also, they were taken out to show the bright sun and the hot weather.

 

 

Why food is important for our body? The importance of food was taught by showing the kids fallen leaves as they turn brown when they fall and do not get food.

 

 

Cleanliness Drive: After lunch break children used to go to take a round of school for their cleanliness drive.

 

 

Earth saviour Race and many more races were conducted for the physical development of the children. In Earth savior race children had to pick the trash with help of a clip and keep it in paper bag then reach the finish line and wave their flag with slogan written on it.

 

 

Role and importance of Community Helpers: Children were taken for a round in school premises and were told about the role and importance of each community helper. Later children made a thank you card to show their gratitude to helpers.

How we Reuse waste in school - kids were shown how the waste food and paper is reused in our school. They were also instructed not to waste food.

 

 

Gratitude Tree – Children wrote their gratitude messages for their parents, friends and for helper on gratitude tree which was placed in school

Celebrating Grandparents day – A great feature of our school were kids express their love and affection for their grandparents.

Teaching about our country as well as other countries, their culture, flag and food items by decorating a classroom where children wore the dresses of different countries and were given variety of food items to taste.

Rain water Harvesting – To teach the importance and different ways by which students can help in saving water.

Observe and sketch.

Examine items carefully and draw what they see. For eg. Finding flowers of different colors and point out the petals and other parts. Or find a variety of leaves and observe the different shapes, colors, textures, and draw the picture in their file.

 Puppet Shows:

This is a great teaching aid which I use for visual learners as they enjoy and learn new things.

 Picture & Objects :

Objects to feel ,touch and see helps the child to differentiate better .

 

 Songs are composed to teach various concepts and values to children. This is a picture where children were singing Hindi Swar song.

 Germination:Children are made aware of plant life with an hand on activity of Germination where they water the seeds on regular basis.

 Community Outreach-My teaching is not only confined to my classroom I try to reach the

community too. I have taken few sessions where the parents were explained about the importance of keeping their surroundings clean by following the “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan”. As a result of which parents formed a cleanliness messengers group in their society and spread the same message.

Session on SDG’s was taken up by me where I explained the parents group to how they can contribute in achieving these sdg’s.

All these activities are an example of the achievements in the community beyond the classroom that provide unique and distinguished experience of learning and exploring the world for our students.

My Vision

I want my students to discover a world of higher education, employment opportunities and success at work with the right dose of Humanism, sensitivity towards nature and appropriate sense of pride in building of our nation.