Teachers everywhere have yet another new challenge—supporting students and their families from home. We know that high-quality interactions, including interesting, hands-on experiences that are facilitated and supported with feedback, scaffolding, and higher-order thinking questions, best support young students' learning. So how do you help your students' caregivers offer the same high-quality interactions while at home? Well, Rachel Giannini has some super fun ideas to share! The following are ideas she shared during her session at our recent InterAct CLASS Summit.
As many of us know, books are not a part of everyone's home. There are certain areas that libraries have been completely closed and books are not always easily accessible, but we still want to have a literacy-rich environment. Labels are a really great way because it is so inexpensive!
You can scaffold this for your youngest kids all the way up to those emerging readers. You can start by using the labels to work on letter recognition, point out letter sounds, and begin word recognition.
But as those kids become older, you can:And the fact that those labels are so inexpensive, their something that can be changed over and over and over again as your little becomes more and more confident with those skills.
Children are concrete thinkers, so when we teach subjects like math, which is extremely abstract, we use manipulatives. And today we're gonna be using….socks!
With socks, you can do counting, pairing, and math equations. With manipulatives like socks, you can practice:
And socks are also good for sensory needs like squeezing, throwing, and sock hockey!
Make the most of screen time! When watching a movie together, you can ask some of the same questions teachers ask during a read aloud!
Before watching, ask them a few questions, like:
Then halfway through their watching, have them pause and ask:
Afterward, have them tell you their favorite character and why and if they could change one thing what would they change.
These questions seem super simple and they are but they help with sequencing, as well as critical thinking. You can use the same open-ended questions!
If you want more ideas to try at home, you can watch the entire session!
Rachel Gianinni is a childhood specialist, an early childhood advocate, and a video blog host. Rachel has an extreme enthusiasm for all things early childhood. She believes in the power of play, getting dirty, climbing trees, stargazing, pretending, and the idea that learning is magical. You can also check out all her videos on her website.
Do you have fond childhood memories of sitting with a special adult and listening to them read one of your favorite stories? I vividly remember my dad reading The Elephant’s Child by Rudyard Kipling to me and how we laughed together at the funny voices he used. As an educator, you know how important those moments are for building warm connections, enjoying time together, and learning about many things. So, even if you missed out on those moments as a child, you want to create those moments for the children in your classroom. With careful planning, you can be confident that your read-alouds will be exciting, effective learning opportunities.
The majority of early childhood classrooms have at least one child who is a dual language learner (DLL) and this population is growing. One in three children from birth to age six speak a language besides English at home. Consequently, the majority of teachers need strategies on how to best support this group of students. We reached out to Veronica Fernandez, Developmental Psychologist and Research Scientist at the University of Miami for strategies she’s found most successful.
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