Growing Brains

28th November 2020

Recently I heard someone who talked about Early Childhood Teachers in a way that upset me, "only employed for their teaching pedagogy".

I follow a teacher who regularly blogs about teaching in early childhood. I read this today and it resonated with me. 

"Play is the “natural habitat” of young humans. Traditional schools are, at their core, a form of captivity. Longer school days, more academic instruction, developmentally inappropriate expectations, less time outdoors, standardization, and high stakes testing are causing children’s brains to stop growing. The cure, according to science, is to set our children free, to let them play: that is how brains grow."

Play is the way and I will be true to myself.

Play for older children still includes using creativity, imagination and open-ended activities. The push for academic learning has to be balanced with knowledge of how ākonga learn. My goal was to assist ākonga to develop self regulation and autonomy. Ākonga can learn through play - game based learning is one way of doing this e.g. Kahoot, Minecraft, Studyladder. Using STEAM activities and challenges is something I would like to have done more of.

Source: How Brains Develop