Tips from the Coordinator

Week 2

ACTIVE LEARNING

“Active learning is defined as learning in which the child, by acting on objects and

 interacting with people, ideas, and events, constructs new understanding. No one else can have

 experiences for the child. Children must do this for themselves.”                                                          

- Mary Hohmann & David P. Weikart  

                                                                                                                                  

The HighScope Curriculum is distinguished from other curriculums by its importance on “Active 

Learning”. That means learning is not simply a process of adults giving information to the children.

Rather, the children are active learners- discovering things through active involvement with people,

objects, events and ideas. They learn best from following their own interests while being actively

supported and challenged by adults. In the classroom, the teachers are as active and involved as the 

children. They give thoughtful attention to the materials they provide, the activities they plan, and the

 ways they talk with the children to both support and challenge what the children are experiencing 

and thinking.  This approach is called “Active Learning” – a process in which the adults and the 

children are partners in the learning process.  

                                                                                 

Active Learning has five ingredients, all of which must be present when the teachers plan an 

activity for the children. These five ingredients are:      

1. Materials:  The adults provide enough materials of children’s interest. For instance, the children 

like to play with cars, or dinosaurs etc. Then these objects may be used for sorting, classifying or 

counting activities to develop mathematical skills.

2. Manipulation: The children have opportunities to explore and transform the materials they choose

 to use. For instance, the adults do not demonstrate how to use the materials. If a child does not want 

to count the cars but he/she is sorting them by colors then he is given a choice to do so. The child is 

still learning a mathematical skill by classifying the cars by their colors.

3. Choice: The children choose materials and play partners and plan their activities according to their

 interests and needs. For instance, a child chooses to play in the block center with the cars only with

 a certain person.

4. Child language: The children describe verbally or nonverbally what they see and do. For 

instance, in an activity, if the adult is doing all the talking the child becomes distracted and impatient; 

therefore, no learning is taking place. When a child talks about what they are doing, they modify 

their thinking to take new learning in account.

5. Adult Scaffolding: The adults support the children’s current developmental level and offer gentle

 extension to advance their abilities to reason, create and problem-solve.  For instance, using the same

 example, if a child does not want to count the cars but he/she is sorting them by colors then the adult

 may encourage him/her to count the sorted colored cars and discover which is more and less.

Family involvement is a key aspect of “Active Learning”. The teachers are experts in child 

development and the parents are experts on their children. Working together will lead to a happier

 and successful child.  Just as children engage in active learning throughout the class, they can do the 

same at home when parents incorporate learning into different parts of the day. The children’s homes 

can be extensions of the classroom and therefore can be natural learning environments. Family 

members can use the home environment to build on learning; for example, supporting math concepts

 my naming the shape of common household objects, such as round plates, or counting the stair steps

 on the way to a room. The parents may also provide their children with activities keeping in mind 

the five ingredients of Active Learning. 

Please watch the following useful video to understand 'Active Learning' even better:

Regards,

Ms Zarmeena Aamir   

Week 3

DEVELOPING LANGUAGE AND LITERACY SKILLS IN

 EARLY YEARS

Literacy skills develop gradually in the early years. Oral language is a foundation for early literacy 

and its development begins at birth. Infants listen to caregivers talk and sing to them. Older infants 

and toddlers talk to communicate their needs to the people around them. By the time children are in 

preschool, there is a significant increase in their use of conversation to create and sustain

 relationships. Three and four-year-olds ask questions, listen, refer to things that are not present, and 

talk about desires and imaginary situations. Their vocabulary grows and they master the basic rules 

of grammar. Young children are also beginning to read and write, at first in unconventional ways

(such as reading pictures and drawing horizontal lines or scribbles) and later in more conventional 

ways. Unfortunately, our children are unable to attend school at the moment, but that doesn’t mean 

that learning needs to stop. Adults at home may use these following strategies to support early 

learning in language, literacy, and communication through the activities sent out by the teachers on

their blogs;

Strategies to support comprehension: 

 - Engage in extended back and forth conversations with children. 

 - Create stories with children. 

 - Read and discuss books with children. 

 - Incorporate ideas from stories and books throughout the day.

Strategies to support speaking:

 - Model appropriate speech. 

 - Listen to children speak. 

 - Use open-ended questions. 

 - Encourage children to talk instead of using gestures. 

 - Encourage children to talk to one another.

Strategies to support vocabulary:

 - Encourage children to describe their thoughts and experiences. 

 - Read books and tell stories with both basic and unusual vocabulary. 

 - Provide opportunities for children to use new materials and ideas.

Strategies to support phonological awareness: 

 - Explore and identify sounds with children. 

 - Make rhyming words. 

 - Build syllable recognition (by breaking words into syllables)

Strategies to support alphabetical knowledge: 

 - Build letter recognition. 

 - Build letter-sound awareness. 

Strategies to support reading:

 - Provide reading materials that cater to the child's interest.

 - Read interactively with children every day. 

 - Encourage children to read to adults.

Strategies to support book knowledge: 

 - Explore the book with children. 

 - Help children distinguish between pictures and print. 

Strategies to support writing: 

 - Provide a variety of writing and drawing materials. 

 - Expect and support various forms of writing and developmental spelling. - Encourage children to

write for a wide variety of reasons. 

 - Take dictation from children. (Children dictate their ideas to adults to write)

Following are some links for your better understanding: 

https://youtu.be/L11jA1IRkUA

 https://youtu.be/vJgl3-sIEBM



Kindly email me if you have any further queries regarding this article and I’d be happy to provide

you with more details.


Following are two videos that you may find very helpful:


Click here for a video on making letter collections

Click here for a video on making a word box


Regards, 

 Ms Zarmeena Aamir (eys.coordinator@mls.com.sa)

Week 4

DEVELOPING MATHEMATICAL SKILLS IN EARLY YEARS

Week 5

Week 6