The nursery and primary years are the foundation of a child’s educational journey, shaping their curiosity, social skills, and love for learning. Yet, traditional methods often fall short in addressing the diverse needs of young learners. Therefore, to unlock their full potential, teachers must embrace innovative approaches that blend creativity, critical thinking, technology, and empathy in an inclusive and transformative environment.
This blog post explores actionable strategies teachers can use to optimize nursery and primary school curriculum, ensuring every child thrives. The following strategies defines how school and teachers must holistically work to promote innovation in shaping the minds of early learners.
No 1. Incorporate
Play-Based Learning with Purpose.
Why It Works: Play is a child’s natural language. Research shows play-based learning boosts cognitive, emotional, and social development of pupils (UNESCO, 2022). Thus, any foundational learning devoid of play is boring and backward. It is liken to a rote learning process barren of the modern learning- mix that prioritizes adaptability to technology and pupils learning styles, empathy, curiosity, resilience, creativity, emotional intelligence, critical and analytical thinking skills etc.
No 2. Teachers Integrate I
Innovative Tactics:
Schools should regularly create a S
TEM Play Stations that could turn corners of the classroom or halls into mini-labs for hands-on science experiments with everyday objects that are familiar to the pupils. This should involve the use of low-cost materials and learning activities rooted in cultural relevance such as local stories to prioritize joy and curiosity over rote memorization.
No 3.
Gamified the Lessons:
Gamification is the act of integrating games element such as video games into regular teaching methods in the classroom to make the topic more fascinating, and rewarding to the pupils. Gamification makes learning more interesting in the following ways:
Helps teachers weave narrative story-line around the topic to make students want to know more, and get addicted to learning.
Create a group play around the topics.
Giving instant reward points on a chart board as obtainable in video games.
Help learners gain mastery of the concepts.
Inspire team work spirit among the pupils.
Give instant feedback to pupils in the classroom.
Admittedly, some subjects are more gamifiable than others. Nevertheless, gamifying lessons has been the new innovation in education for a decade now and have formed part of the 21-century in-thing for teachers to optimize pupils learning and skills development.
For example, to teach subtraction and addition, a teacher in a kindergarten class may design a stall at the corner of the classroom with cartoons, cardboard papers, Ankara materials, and drawn posters on each stall based on what they are selling; then select several pupils to go for shopping, pay for the goods of their choice with improvised paper designed-money or bottle cover or coins, and have them perform the task of adding the total numbers of goods bought, while subtracting the remaining change from the principal to determine what was spent.
The memory of such games are usually unforgettable as the pupils will use the skills throughout their life time.
NO 4. Teachers should Individualize the
Learning Process: by tailoring every topic explanation to meet the unique learning needs, style, strengths, interest, and pace of individual pupils .
Why It Works: Every child learns at their own pace. Personalized approaches prevent frustration and nurture confidence in pupils learning skills. For example, teachers may have a dyslexia pupil listen to audio-books for a literacy lesson while his fellow classmates use printed text. This will ensure that the learning environment is not boring but inclusive, effective, and joyful for all learners; while reducing learning gaps in the classroom.
NO 5.
Use of Outdoor and Nature-Integrated Techniques: teachers should purposefully blend outdoor or natural environments into the learning process, using nature as both a classroom and teaching tool. Using nature as a hands-on experiential learning every term, foster pupils curiosity in the natural world such as plants, animals, weather, landscapes and ecology.
Why It Works: Outdoor learning improves focus, creativity, and physical health (University of Edinburgh, 2021).
NO 6 Parents-Teachers Collaboration: teachers should create a synergy with parents that involves personalized, inclusive and sustainable learning for pupils. As parents share insights into the pupils learning styles or interests with teachers, the learning curve of the pupils will be met and the right innovative methods can be deployed to continuously address learning needs.
Why It Matters
It helps parents to easily reinforce the knowledge at home.
It boost pupils confidence in experimental learning.
It enables parents to provide a diverse context.
It creates a feasible collaboration for helping pupils improves their learning skills.
5. Incorporate and mirror Social-Emotional Learning: teaching pupils to understand their feelings and the feelings of their fellow is essential to fostering emotional intelligence, empathy, resilience and a supportive learning environment.
How Teachers can Mirror
Social Emotional Learning:
Place a visual Chart that defines different emotions to teach feelings and appropriate reactions.
Teach emotional awareness by labeling your own true feelings at the moment, and have them tell you theirs (e.g., I am feeling unhappy at the moment and I need to understand why, maybe speak out and do things that will cheer me up).
Ask pupils to draw or express their feelings on a cardboard or paper and teach them how to deal with it.
Teachers should teach pupils active listening and how to paraphrase words during conversation.
Teachers should role-play how to react during a conflict, and steps to resolving conflicts.
Note that Emotional intelligence and resilience is as important as academic success for the following reasons:
It regulate feelings of anxiety and improves peer
relationships.
It create an inclusive and safe classroom behavior.
It anti-social behaviors such as bullying in the school environment.
Success Story: at Peerage Private School our mission is to promote quality education with best practices, using innovation and creativity to connect and adapt learning engagements to every child learning need, while nurturing confidence, critical and creative thinking abilities of our pupils to align with the real world.
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