Working in a bilingual preschool & teaching children online with Justyna Wasek

Working in a bilingual preschool & teaching children online-Justyna Wasek

Reflection on the 2nd webinar on 22/12/2021

A screenshot of the presentation

I was really engaged in the presentation. The theories the presenter mentioned are concluded from her hands-on experience. She is an in-service teacher working in a bilingual preschool, so she mainly focused on children aged from 2.5 to 6. Interestingly, there are more foreign teachers and assistants with people having different accents, which shows the diversity of the preschool and provides students with a good language learning environment.

I was impressed by a quote she used in the presentation the most "It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men"- Frederick Douglas. Children do not only develop intellectual skills but also social counterparts. In order to achieve this, there are some programmes: positive discipline, Jolly Phonics/Jolly English, mindfulness, values, maths, fine motor skills and gross motor skills. These programmes made me remind of the five main realms of kindergartens in China: health, languages, society, science and art. In my opinion, it is easier to shape the children and build them into strong images when they are young because they are like pieces of white paper waiting for people to write on. When they have a strong base like the one in constructing buildings, they are less likely to fall apart in the future.

The next thing that lingers on my mind is that they extended the period of the classes from 15 minutes to 30 minutes as for stationary classes even for very young children whose attention span is quite short because they believe those children will enjoy the classes as long as the lessons are designed well. However, from my perspective, the time is doubled, which may be problematic for very young children, in that it is hard for them to focus on studying for that long time and it may influence the effectiveness of the classes. I do not see how it is in the real situation, so I may be wrong, because, from my experience, even it is officially claimed that a class lasts for 30 minutes, and it is normally shorter due to the first few minutes is usually for children to get ready for the class in the real life; hence, the whole class is shortened.

Finally, five principles of a good lesson were addressed: routine elements; logical sequence; alternation of elements;  pace and old and new things. I will definitely take these elements into consideration and always bear them in my mind!

Some extra points:
Obstacles of online classes for preschool children: 

1. Parents push children and answer questions;

2. Parents speaking;
3. Technical problems for children to mute/unmute themselves;
There are more of them from my side:

4. It is hard to ensure if the students are paying attention to the lessons;

5. Less interactive for children as for some of their five senses, such as touching.
Tools for teaching very young learners online 
1. online calendar
2. hello song  and goodbye song
3. online flashcards
4. LearningApps.org (change pdf. files into online worksheets)
5. YouTube
6. iSLCOLLECTIVE (https://en.islcollective.com/)
7. twinkl (https://www.twinkl.com.cn/)