Early Years – The Power of Observation

An undiscovered world is where our little children explore the wonderful things in their own way. They may know the world by watching, listening, smelling or touching…… Maybe, who knows, the next moment they will use a “tool” to explore and express their knowledge of this world.

Our children have hundreds of languages and hundreds of possibilities. They use their “hundreds of languages” to work through experiences and projects. These languages are symbolic, including drawing, sculpting, dramatic play, writing, and painting.

As teachers, we should respect their inquisitiveness, their powerful and unconstrained imagination, and encourage the children to illustrate their understanding via different languages. How meaningful it is for the teacher to record all these!

 

Part 1 Daily Diary 

As in the video below, can you guess what the two little girls were looking at and talking about?

It turned out that they were watching the wonderful moments and highlights of Koala Class written and recorded elaborately everyday by the teachers which is called “Daily Diary”.

 

Q1 What is Daily Diary?  The relationship between Daily Diary and The Class?

The daily diary is the process of tracking our class activities as well as recording children’s languages, thoughts, feelings, and ideas, aiming at motivating the children to express themselves.

Q2 What is the relationship between Daily Diary and the children？

Dairy Diary is not only read by teachers, but also accessible to our children. They’d love to read their daily diary and thrilled to finding their own photos and wonderful moment. Meanwhile, new ideas emerge as they communicating with their peers in the process of accumulating learning experiences.

 

Q3 What is the relationship between Daily Diary and Parents?

A daily diary is therefore prepared to give parents an idea about how their children are performing and learning at school as one of the communication tools between the school and our families.

 

Q4 What is the relationship between Daily Diary and Teachers?

Another advantage of keeping a daily diary is that as homeroom teachers, we can reflect through the diary, discover some next steps in the process of education through discussion, communication and sharing ideas. Then we go on to solve these deficiencies jointly, improving our teaching abilities.

 

Part 2 Children’s Diary 幼儿个案观察

Q1 What are Children’s Individual Observation/Children’s Diary?

Observing children, noting their behaviors, analyzing their development are part of everyday of a preschool educator. Individual Observation, also known as the  Children’s Diary, are based on this information and play the role of promoting skills gaining and all-round development of each individual.

 

Q2 Why Children‘s Individual Observation are so important?

Understanding and listening to a child. Being a teacher is not only about teaching children, but also about observing their exploration and learning, which plays an important role for educators to learn more about each and every child they work with. The teachers highlight each child’s positive traits and share specific memories and their languages of enjoyable moments in the classroom throughout the year, and finally do the reflection and evaluation.

As teachers, we could better understand the children’s thoughts when we sit, observe, record the activities and language of them. Through observations, educators can help make improvements to the environment and facilitate children’s learning.

Making observation records is an important way to improve teachers’ proficiencies, reflecting on educational effects and improving educational abilities.

 

A PERFECT END OF THIS YEAR in KOALA CLASS

 

Can you guess what it is?

We published a book! The little ones leaned forward, turning over their book delightedly. There’s nothing to get more excited about!

Through a combination of Daily Diary and Children’s individual Observation, we‘ve made a memory book specifically for our little learners！It is an accumulation of little Koalas’ learning that can accompany them with their entire lifetime.

Why wouldn’t you capture the wonderful moments of your child in this way? What a meaningful thing that would be!