Sự giao tiếp và ngôn ngữ
Sự phát triển ngôn ngữ nói của trẻ em làm nền tảng cho tất cả bảy lĩnh vực học tập và phát triển. Sự tương tác qua lại của trẻ ngay từ khi còn nhỏ hình thành nền tảng cho sự phát triển ngôn ngữ và nhận thức. Số lượng và chất lượng của các cuộc trò chuyện mà các em có với người lớn và bạn bè suốt cả ngày trong một môi trường sử dụng nhiều ngôn ngữ là rất quan trọng. Bằng cách bình luận về những gì trẻ quan tâm hoặc làm, và lặp lại những gì trẻ nói với vốn từ vựng mới được thêm vào, các học viên sẽ xây dựng ngôn ngữ của trẻ một cách hiệu quả. Thường xuyên đọc sách cho trẻ nghe, tích cực lôi cuốn trẻ vào các câu chuyện, truyện phi hư cấu, vần điệu và bài thơ, sau đó cung cấp cho trẻ nhiều cơ hội để sử dụng và lồng ghép từ mới trong nhiều ngữ cảnh, sẽ mang đến cho trẻ cơ hội phát triển. Thông qua trò chuyện, kể chuyện và đóng vai, trong đó trẻ em chia sẻ ý tưởng của mình với sự hỗ trợ và làm mẫu từ giáo viên, đồng thời đặt câu hỏi nhạy cảm để khuyến khích trẻ xây dựng, trẻ em trở nên thoải mái khi sử dụng nhiều cấu trúc từ vựng và ngôn ngữ phong phú.”
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Children’s personal, social and emotional development (PSED) is crucial for children to lead healthy and happy lives, and is fundamental to their cognitive development. Underpinning their personal development are the important attachments that shape their social world. Strong, warm and supportive relationships with adults enable children to learn how to understand their own feelings and those of others. Children should be supported to manage emotions, develop a positive sense of self, set simple goals, have confidence in their own abilities, persist and wait for what they want, and direct attention as necessary. Through adult modelling and guidance, they will learn how to look after their bodies, including healthy eating, and manage personal needs independently. Through supported interaction with other children, they learn how to make good friendships, co-operate and resolve conflicts peaceably. These attributes will provide a secure platform from which children can achieve at school and in later life.
Physical Development
Physical activity is vital in children’s all-around development, enabling them to pursue happy, healthy and active lives. Gross and fine motor experiences develop incrementally throughout early childhood, starting with sensory explorations and the development of a child’s strength, coordination and positional awareness through tummy time, crawling and play movement with both objects and adults. By creating games and providing opportunities for play both indoors and outdoors, adults can support children to develop their core strength, stability, balance, spatial awareness, coordination and agility. Gross motor skills provide the foundation for developing healthy bodies and social and emotional well-being. Fine motor control and precision help with hand-eye coordination, which is later linked to early literacy. Repeated and varied opportunities to explore and play with small world activities, puzzles, arts and crafts and the practice of using small tools, with feedback and support from adults, allow children to develop proficiency, control and confidence.
Literacy
It is crucial for children to develop a life-long love of reading. Reading consists of two dimensions: language comprehension and word reading. Language comprehension (necessary for both reading and writing) starts from birth. It only develops when adults talk with children about the world around them and the books (stories and non-fiction) they read with them and enjoy rhymes, poems and songs together. Skilled word reading, taught later, involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words. Writing involves transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech, before writing).
Mathematics
Developing a strong grounding in numbers is essential so that all children develop the necessary building blocks to excel mathematically. Children should be able to count confidently, and develop a deep understanding of the numbers to 10, the relationships between them and the patterns within those numbers. By providing frequent and varied opportunities to build and apply this understanding – such as using manipulatives, including small pebbles and tens frames for organising counting – children will develop a secure base of knowledge and vocabulary from which mastery of mathematics is built. In addition, it is important that the curriculum includes rich opportunities for children to develop their spatial reasoning skills across all areas of mathematics including shape, space and measures. It is important that children develop positive attitudes and interests in mathematics, look for patterns and relationships, spot connections, ‘have a go’, talk to adults and peers about what they notice and not be afraid to make mistakes.
Understanding the World
Understanding the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community. The frequency and range of children’s personal experiences increase their knowledge and sense of the world around them – from visiting parks, libraries and museums to meeting important members of society such as police officers, nurses and firefighters. In addition, listening to a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems will foster their understanding of our culturally, socially, technologically and ecologically diverse world. As well as building important knowledge, this extends their familiarity with words that support understanding across domains. Enriching and widening children’s vocabulary will support later reading comprehension.
Expressive Arts and Design
The development of children’s artistic and cultural awareness supports their imagination and creativity. It is important that children have regular opportunities to engage with the arts, enabling them to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials. The quality and variety of what children see, hear and participate in are crucial for developing their understanding, self-expression, vocabulary and ability to communicate through the arts. The frequency, repetition and depth of their experiences are fundamental to their progress in interpreting and appreciating what they hear, respond to and observe.
