Flamingo Room (3-5 years) PRESCHOOL PROGRAM
Preschool
Our preschool room provides an educational program for children prior to their first year of formal schooling. The program comprises a mixture of structured and unstructured play experiences, incorporating both educator-initiated experiences and activities, and independent indoor and outdoor play.
Our Educators
It also includes sessions where the educator brings the whole class together for certain activities; typically, these include roll call, singing, story reading, language games and letter and sound work. Whole class sessions can also be used as a time to introduce new topics or concepts. For instance, the educator might conduct a discussion, show pictures, read an informational text or carry out a role-play as a way of teaching or reinforcing learning.
Environment
The preschool environment comprises various aspects of the early childhood education setting. This includes areas for play and learning activities, materials and resources, daily schedules, transitions and routines, as well as the actual teaching and learning programs and activities. Decisions about the design of environmental elements should take into account the need to support and nurture children’s language development and learning. Environments should stimulate both the quality and the amount of growth in language. Following is a description of different environmental features in relation to how they support children’s oral language and learning development.
Enhancing our Preschool Children’s Language
- Oral interactions between educators and individual children or groups of children during play and other child-centred classroom activities
- Talking that introduces new vocabulary and grammatical structures to children
- The use of a clear, fluent voice and appropriate intonation as well as good listening practices when talking with children
- Responses that focus on the intent rather than the grammatical or word choice errors of children’s talk
- The use of open-ended questions that extend children’s use of language
- The introduction, demonstration and reinforcement of social courtesies and appropriate speaking behaviour; e.g. turn-taking, listening politely
- Encouragement of children’s talk during structured group activities
- Regular participation in children’s play and use of these opportunities to support children’s language development
- Use of daily routines and activity transitions to support language learning and development.
Classroom Arrangement
The delineation of play and activity areas and the arrangement of furniture should lend itself to talk among children. It should offer opportunities for children to work in both large and small groups as well as with partners and individually. Activity areas need to be set up in a way that minimises children distracting each other. Several simultaneous talk events should be possible without giving rise to distractions.
Materials & Resources
Language materials include objects and items (for example, blocks and construction equipment, magnets and magnetic and non-magnetic items, different sized containers of sand and water, different textured fabric and paper) that can be explored by children and that can be used for cooperative investigations around a range of topics and concepts. They should be age appropriate and of a quantity that is sufficient for the number of children who will need to use them.
Learning & Teaching Programs
Programs outline learning and development outcomes and the experiences, activities and resources to be used in achieving them. They should be designed with regard for the language capabilities of the children for whom they are written and in a way that integrates language use into the different learning and development goals.
Daily Schedules
Our schedules are constructed to include a range of activities and experiences and indicate the times at which they will be available for children each day. They show who will do what and when they will do it. Schedules should ensure that adequate blocks of time are made available for children to interact with materials, other children and educators and for different integrated learning activities. We provide for a balance between large and small group work and pair and individual activities and should take account of the time required for children to complete activities for depth of learning. Longer periods of time are often needed for activities where social interaction is a feature and can lead to higher levels of cognitive engagement. Schedules need to show times for children to engage in language-based activities. There is also planned and systematic opportunities for consistent peer interaction.
Transitions
Transitions refer to the methods by which changeover from one activity to another is implemented. They are usually simple and brief and are used to regulate the day and facilitate smooth changeovers. We find that simple language activities used during transitions are key to successful transitions. Songs and rhymes, finger plays, word games and guessing games can assist with smooth and effective transitions while also supporting language learning and development.