Thank you so much for your thoughts. I’m struggling after 16 years teaching in the early childhood age range, moving to a school with an emerging ECE curriculum. Although I can see this approach working for under 4s, I’m teaching the oldest children in our ECE (4-5 year olds) and for this I struggle even more as there is a lot of pressure on us to transition them into the demands of Primary school which is a far too formal setting in my opinion. The trouble is, from my training background and my experience, it is very hard to suddenly not be the one choosing the topics nor activity ‘experiences’ as you say. I have concerns that throughout a year, not many interests will be focused on overall nor by enough children within the class. As an example, if throughout the year, the children are never seen to be interested in volcanos, they’ll miss so many learning opportunities, such as, in a natural disasters topic. Whereas if they show an interest in ‘bears’ all year, we learn about bears all year but no other animals…It’s proving such a massive learning curve and I’m really struggling. Any support you have will be hugely appreciated!
Thank you so much for your thoughts. I’m struggling after 16 years teaching in the early childhood age range, moving to a school with an emerging ECE curriculum. Although I can see this approach working for under 4s, I’m teaching the oldest children in our ECE (4-5 year olds) and for this I struggle even more as there is a lot of pressure on us to transition them into the demands of Primary school which is a far too formal setting in my opinion. The trouble is, from my training background and my experience, it is very hard to suddenly not be the one choosing the topics nor activity ‘experiences’ as you say. I have concerns that throughout a year, not many interests will be focused on overall nor by enough children within the class. As an example, if throughout the year, the children are never seen to be interested in volcanos, they’ll miss so many learning opportunities, such as, in a natural disasters topic. Whereas if they show an interest in ‘bears’ all year, we learn about bears all year but no other animals…It’s proving such a massive learning curve and I’m really struggling. Any support you have will be hugely appreciated!