Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Children

            Every child learns in their own unique way. Children have different weaknesses and strengths. It is important to remember that every child is an individual. Children have different interests from their peers. Children may have unique or different home environments or cultures. When teachers take all this information into consideration they can provide a more meaningful literacy journey for children. When observing children’s writing, teachers can see how unique every student is. Understanding the individuals within your classroom is very important when creating lesson plans that will help children gain literacy skills. One way that children can express their individuality within their writing is through having a journal. Journals allow children the freedom to express their thoughts, feelings, and ideas by recording their words on paper. This project can be done in a way that appeals to young children and engages them. It is important for young children to enjoy and be engaged in their learning. There are several different ways you can teach most lessons. Finding a lesson that is fun and meets the needs of your classroom will result in more engaged learning. A good example of this is singing songs and figure plays to work on phonological awareness skills. When a teacher finds an interesting song that an individual likes, it can help that child gain phonological awareness skills. Through certain songs and figure plays children can learn about rhyming and syllables. Certain songs can also work on a child’s understanding of initial and final sounds of words. Songs and figure plays can be fun, interesting, and engaging tools within your classroom. Understanding the individual children in your classroom and finding fun ways to teach lessons can help teachers make every child’s classroom experience a good one.             

5 comments:

  1. Understanding each child's background and respecting their own learning style is one of the most important jobs to teachers. I agree with you that children have different preference, experience, and thoughts. They really need to be respected those kinds of things and it will help children to have encouragement on their literacy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love your suggestion to provide individual journals for each student. Encouraging children to write in journals can be an amazing experience, and a great record of development. Children can take pride in their stories, and feel free to take risks here. Journals can allow a teacher to truly understand a child. When speaking about individuality, and appreciation for diversity, a journal can be a teachers inlet into the world of a child. I plan on using journals when I teach someday!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think suggesting journals for young children to parents is a great idea; many parents of young children might not think of journal writing as an age-appropriate activity. However, we can explain to parents how much can be learned (both by children and their teachers/parents) by encouraging children to write or draw freely. What a great way to boost early literacy development!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Having a journal is one of the most productive ways to help children with their literacy. Giving them the opportunity to express themselves in whatever way they would like is very empowering for them and allows them to create something that is unique to them.

    ReplyDelete
  5. It is so important to tailor each lesson plan to fit the interests and needs of the unique children in your classroom. This is why teachers really need to love what they do, and keep growing as learners and educators, because their job is constantly changing! This is one of the most exciting parts of our chosen profession! We will never do things exactly the same way twice, because we will never have the exact same group of children who are in the same place in their learning twice. We constantly need to observe and modify lessons to make sure we are engaging our students as best we can.

    ReplyDelete