According to UNICEF (2012), Early-childhood development (ECD) refers to a comprehensive approach to policies and programs for children from birth to eight years of age. The purpose of this approach is to defend child’s rights to develop all their cognitive, emotional, social and physical potential. Since birth, children start to explore their world through the senses. Thanks to this constant exploration, children swiftly develop the domains of their physical and mental abilities. From the simplest of activities at every age level can promote stimulation and growth in children's cognitive, social, language, and physical (fine and gross motor) skills. (Becky L. Spivey, M.Ed.). The proficiency of understanding how the context affects children, is the key to know how to help their learning processes in an integrally way. In order to understand children’s development, there are the seven domains of early-childhood development. According to Miller (2014) the seven domains
I love this blog because on my ;) research I'm working with kids. I recognize the importance of not only enhance the language, but also an integral development of chilhood througt different activities; in that order it would be amazing if you can provide some examples of activities to help one or another domain in specific. You should know that it is a little bit difficult to work on the self-help and adaptive domain, so i want to know some exercises to do in class using this domain.
ResponderEliminarThank you.
Jajaja I can´t thank you enought my dear Mechus. As you said, it is important to work in activities that not only improve knowledge, also, in topics related to the essential and natural development of the human being, which we sometimes forget for giving more importance to external activities. In my next post I am going to propose some activities.
EliminarThanks for your comment. :)
EliminarI've never thought about how important it is to keep in mind these domains. I remember having learned those domains on the emphasis class at the university, however I didn't pay much attention to it until this semester. Nowadays, I'm working with very young learners, theyr'e in second grade so they're between 5 and 7 years old.
ResponderEliminarThe first classes weren't very succsessful due to the lack of information I had, regarding this specific children stage.
After having visited this blog and having reflected upon my practice, I realized that having activities in which sudents are foster to work on any of these domains, are really meaninful activities for them.
Among the discoveries I've made all along the process, I found that translating at this stage is quite good. Somethimes not even images are enough for some students to learn vocabulary, that is when translation works as an aid for them to practice.
It is clear that the whole grammar traslation method is not meaningful when learning a foreign language, it is also well known that with that method, students are not having a complete and contextualized experience, nevertheless, having SOME translation moments are sometimes required by students and it is not a sin to use Spanish when necessary.
This hot potatoes excercise is a good example of it. Associating words with the native languade is valid here.
I am really touched by your words and how this blog has allowed you to reflect on your teaching practice. Since I met this topic, I also recognize its importance and how significant it is to us as human beings. When you want to teach vocabulary to children between these ages, it is quite rewarding to take into account the domains and all you can think about it jajaja. The images are fundamental, so that they relate the word to a tangible object; but when you play with the domains you can use movements, motor activities, emotional ... in short, everything that allows you to create strong and more real links with knowledge. Finally, it is true,it is not a sin to use Spanish when they can't understand something specific especially instructions, or to create relationships, what is really important is that the majority of the class be developed in English. Successes in your project.
EliminarThanks for your comment. :)
EliminarKnowing the seven domains of early childhood development can help parents and educators to better guide children in the process of meeting their emotional, cognitive and physical needs. I consider, that all of these domains should be developed conjointly, but I have found difficult to deal with the spiritual domain with very young children. I am afraid of setting up in my students just one way of thinking about religion. Therefore, I would like to know how are you dealing with this domain: Have you considered the importance of families' beliefs? How do you define religion, spirituality, and God? ¿Are you focused on one religion? I have these questions because, for me, at this young age students should understand that there are multiple religions and Gods. Then, teachers should encourage an attitude of respect and understanding towards other ways of thinking about God and spirituality. I also found this text written by Rebekah A. Richert and Pehr Granqvist, these authors deepen in the concepts of religious and spiritual development in childhood, here you have the link if you want to know some of the authors' perspectives about the development of this domain.
ResponderEliminarhttps://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ce30/997b6ed7877a78f614751ee6471b112c7de1.pdf
It is important to clarify that you can work different domains in the same class, however, self-help & adaptive and Spiritual and moral are the most complicated to work. It is true, it is difficult at an early age to teach that there is a single God or some specific religion. However, we must take into account the focus of the school, in this case in the institution of practice they maintain the Catholic religion.
EliminarWhat I do in my practice is that I emphasize values, for example in topics such as: my body, to recognize the importance of taking care of our body and respect others, although there are differences we are all the same, we must respect that we all think differently, we look different, etc. Another example is present when teaching animals, to recognize that they are living beings and need love, respect and care, the same happens with plants. I hope you can use this information. Thanks for your recommendation and your comment.
Regarding the language domain, I consider that it is one of the most important aspects in order to get language acquisition; no matters whether it is a native language or a foreign one.
ResponderEliminarAccording to the theoretical foundation that you wrote on your post, language domain focuses on the alphabet, phonemic awareness and oral and writing language. Nevertheless, in this information is not explicit the relation between oral and writing language. Therefore, I would like to know how you are integrating these two skills, oral and writing, in regards to the language domain. Besides, how you are managing the phonemic awareness in the foreign language when students are dealing with the same process in their native language.
It is important to emphasize that within the practice I am using nursery rhythmes, so that children can approach a more faithful pronunciation of the foreign language, in this case English. Initially the children are exposed to the alphabet, and when they start with nursery rhythmes they begin to approach new vocabulary. In this way, they develop their listening and speaking. Currently, I am working with children of first grade and they do not know how to write, so I emphasize more the oral part.
EliminarHowever, if you want to work both skills it is good to start with the oral part, you can allow children to recognize for example a word with their image, that image can be accompanied by the spelling, as a first approach. This is easier in the native language, and with English it is necessary to write the words several times since as we know many times it is not pronounced as it is written.
However, it is important to say that significant learning occurs when working in the seven domains, since it is a transversal axis for the human being. Although you consider the most important is the language domain, you can't separate it from the others; It depends on this that strong links are created with learning.
Thanks for your comment. :)
EliminarThe first time that I taught was with young learners and I did know how to teach them, what kind of strategies use or what kind of elements should I take into account regarding his or her needs.Thus, I could read something about this domains and It was truly useful for my classes and my teacher training development. I really like this topic because I believe that learners going to learn in a better way if their needs, context and stages are being condsidered in their learning process.I consider all those topics about the domains very meaningful and a better purpose than a content practice in which the importance is given to the topics and the knowledge.
ResponderEliminarIt's true, we sometimes forget how important it is to focus on students as people and not just as students who must or need to learn something. In addition, you are right, when you take into account this type of needs it is easier for them to acquire new knowledge, since what is taught is not presented as something isolated, but as a set of elements so that they create strong links with the learning. Thanks for your comment.
EliminarHi Andrea! I enjoyed your blog! I'm working with kids the oral tradition and I need to take into account this conceptions because as you know, they need playing and have fun too. We don't need to do all the time theorical classes, we can uses this domains for explaining some topic and do the activities more atractive.
ResponderEliminarI am very happy that this information can help you, it is true, children need to learn, but we can not forget that they are children and they need to play and have fun too, so why not learn while they play? successes and thanks for your comment.
Eliminar