Description: Early Years Tutor Naomi shares top tips on how to support your child during the early stages of their academic and personal development.
In Early Years Education, interest-led learning is the most motivating and captivating way for young children to learn. A common misconception is that when children begin foundation level schooling, there is an expectation for them to sit and learn from books and teacher input.
However, the foundation years are the most curious years. Being able to explore the environment and use their senses to develop understanding is how children learn best.
I strongly live by Benjamin Zander’s quote: “my job is to awaken possibility in other people”. My passion and experience within this field, has taught me some key factors to support children’s learning and development leading them to flourish. As a tutor and an early year’s educator, these factors are how I tailor my lessons in order to guide children to reach their full potentials.
Assess
getting to know children individually and joining in with their activities are ways in which you can find out honestly what fuels their learning. It’s also a key factor in assessing what children know confidently, what they have some knowledge and understanding of, as well as what they don’t.
Whether it be an object, characters or physical activity, gaining this information, essentially supports planning for next steps, (as well as to build a professional bond built on trust).
Plan: incorporate what the child likes into learning activities. Being creative in planning keeps learning stimulating and fun. Also, by including things familiar to the individual will encourage them to feel confident and motivated. Planning is also beneficial to providing a learning focus in order to keep on top of the assessment.
Repeat
whilst it remains important to find out what children do and don’t know, it is just as important to repeat the learning focus. This confirms the skills the child has imbedded confidently and also what they still may be struggling with.
There are of course many other ways to support learning in the early years. Below are my 6 favourite tips:
- Communication – Ultimately, children learn from those around them and how we can communicate with them is ever so important. This includes gesture, tone and expressions as well:
- Use simple, repetitive language
- imitate or repeat what the child has said to confirm yours and their own understanding.
- Model correct vocabulary
- Extend vocabulary by introducing new words
- Allow time for them to respond
- Questions and answers – as children begin to learn about the world around them, they will continuously ask questions. As role models, we should value these questions and work with them to find the answers. A key thing to remember is that as adults we don’t know everything, so be honest about this and research together. Learn from mistakes.
- Exploration – Use all senses. Invite curiosity and support exploration in any context. Encourage children to record their observations for further learning/exploration.
- Independence – sometimes it’s ok to just sit back and watch children explore for themselves. Always allow time and space for these opportunities
- Environment – As well as people, the environment is a child’s biggest teacher. Make use of what is around them. Nature, things in the home, technology etc.
- Have fun! – the most important rule of them all… having fun!
Interested in working with Early Years Tutor Naomi? Contact us today.