Teaching of Young Learners

Source: slideshare.net

Effective teaching of young learners promotes innate language acquisition mechanisms by providing children opportunities to use language as a tool for creating and sharing meanings and by scaffolding experiences to help children function at the growing edge. Effective teaching, therefore, involves authentic communication between learner and teacher and among learners, and is activity-based, providing purposeful ways for students to use language to meet age.

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According to my experience, a teacher should:

     1.  Offer learners enjoyable, active roles in the learning experience.

Young learners are meaning-seekers who learn best by doing and who prefer a safe, but still challenging learning environment. We must provide language input and modelling for young language learners in any language environment, but particularly in an English as a Foreign Language setting where the teacher and the materials are the primary source of language. Yet, the input must be provided in child-appropriate ways.

Direct instruction methodologies and content intended for older learners are being pushed down to classes of younger learners based on the idea that introducing them sooner will make learning more effective. However, young children learn differently and need different learning environments. Overuse of direct teaching of young learners in the full classroom group risks the fallacy that “input” will automatically lead to “intake” – that if we teach something, it has been learned.

For young children, active involvement in the construction of concepts is essential. We must provide input in child appropriate ways and offer many opportunities for children to use language purposefully as language develops. For example, once we have modelled language and procedures for water experiments about things that float and things that sink, or which container holds more water, we can provide opportunities on the playground for children to experiment with water and use the language in discussions. We scaffold by asking questions and making comments as children participate in their very purposeful play and learning tasks.

     2.  Help students develop and practice language through collaboration. 

Children are social learners. While ensuring that students have access to vocabulary and structures they need—and rich exposure to many kinds of literature is a very effective way to model high quality, academic language—and then supporting their language as needed, we provide opportunities for learners to communicate with us and with one another. During the water explorations, for example, one child could be encouraged to conduct the experiments while others give instructions and ask questions about what they see happening.

     3.  Use multi-dimensional, thematically organized activities.

Provide thematically organized activities and incorporate multiple dimensions of learning and learning styles appropriate to younger learners. Thematic organization offers us opportunities to cycle and recycle related language and concepts so that we can support children as they develop the complex connections that lead to learning.

We need to incorporate many kinds of child-development appropriate activities into children’s exploration of themes: we might move like waves on the sea, sing songs about sailing on the ocean, draw pictures of our experiments or our favourite water creatures, weigh and measure water, solve problems about sharing lemonade, read and reflect on a story about a mother duck temporarily losing one of her little ones, and, with children, write reports about what we are learning and thinking about.

     4.  Provide comprehensible input with scaffolding.

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Source: jeanbordner.com

Provide rich yet comprehensible input with supportive scaffolding from teacher, context, and peers to help learners work at the ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) – providing tasks and concepts that children can accomplish or acquire with just a little instruction and support. When children can perform these tasks independently, the growing edge changes or expands, and teachers then support learners with slightly more difficult tasks and concepts. 
The Zone of Proximal Development is the best known Vygotskian concept. 

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To successfully apply it in a classroom, it is important to know not only where a child is functioning now and where that child will be tomorrow, but also how best to assist that child in mastering more advanced skills and concepts. This is where scaffolding comes in.

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Source: slideshare.net

Although not used by Vygotsky himself, the concept of scaffolding helps us understand how aiming instruction within a child’s ZPD can promote the child’s learning and development.

Since teachers must continually focus on providing input and requests for output that children will need to perform at the next level, they must use careful observation and classroom-based assessment to know their children’s capabilities well.

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Scaffolding activities for reading and writing might include reading a story aloud, providing graphic organizers to help children understand and discuss the language patterns and structure of a story, and shared writing with children from the graphic organizer.

Children like learning by doing. As Confucius said: “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.“ They like playing. They like being active in the learning process. According to Piaget, they are active learners and thinkers.

A teacher, hopefully, employs the students’ characteristic to create the interesting methods and techniques. Teachers can accommodate the students’ characteristic to create techniques that allowed the students to be active in the class.

I hope this is useful.

Teacher Barbara