Creating optimal conditions for children's learning
All children are unique in what they bring to the classroom and in their ability to process information and learn through different facets of their Multiple Intelligences. Also, they are unique in their personal preferences and emerging learning styles. As a teacher you should take into account the C-Wheel. (imagen) It is made up of eight principal segments showing a range of factors which contribute to creating optimal conditions for children's language learning. All the ingredients of the C-Wheel start with the letter "C".
1. Context
Children make sense of the world and of language through the context they find themselves in. The context in which children carry out activities in the primary classroom needs to:
-
Be natural, real or understandable.
-
Be relevant and makes sense to the child.
-
Allow for the discovery and construction of meaning.
-
Be active and experiential.
-
Encourage the use of language as a vehicle to do things which have a real purpose.
-
Support children's understanding: story book or body, language, mime...
2.Connections
Optimal conditions for learning may be created when you actively look to build in connections within and between lessons in a number of ways. These include: other areas of learning, child's real life experience at home and school, language and culture compares and relates to English-speaking peoples and cultures, what the children already knows, what is learnt and how it is learnt.
3. coherence
One way of making learning coherent is through creating meaningful contexts and making connections to other areas of children's learning and experience in ways described above. Over the course of the primary years it's important to ensure that there are plenty of opportunities for children to acquire and learn language in meaningful, comprehensible and supported ways.
4. challange
It's important to get the level and balance of linguistic and cognitive challenge right for children. If activities are too easy, children will simply become bored. If activities are too difficult, children are likely to become anxious, and also desmotivated. The concept of the zone of proximal development is helpful in pitching activities and learning sequences at an appropriate level of challenge for children.
5. curiosity
This curiosity can extend to all kinds of topics, as well as to other people, cultures and language itself. The way you realize different classroom techniques, activities and procedures should provide opportunities for children to be curios, investigative and experimental.
6. care
"Children don't care how much we know until they know how much we care." All children need to feel treated and cared about as individual rather than as a group to be controlled. In language classes, support or scaffolding for children's understanding and developing for children's use may be provided by, for example:
-
Using visual and real objects
-
Using mime and gesture
-
Modelling processes to carry out activities
-
Responding to children's meaning.
7. community
Community in the superordinate for three other important ingredients: communication, collaboration and cooperation. In order to create optimal conditions for learning, we need to work towards creating a sense of community in the classroom.
