Educating the Educators – WSA has a role to play
Frequent changes to international standards and continual updates to the academic research which underpins best practice mean that Early Years staff must keep learning and adapting throughout their career.
More than that, all good teachers know the importance of reflecting on their work and their classroom practice – and what better way to do that than in a room full of your highly educated and experienced peers?
At WhichSchoolAdvisor.com we see our role as supporting not only parents and children but the education industry too, and for this reason we have created our Early Years Best Practice Forum, an event which aims to bring together Early Years professionals from nurseries and schools across Dubai to share best practice and, more importantly, to inspire and to inform one another.
Our first event was held at IDEA Early Learning Centre in Victory Heights. IDEA operates the American Creative Preschool Curriculum, an Early Years curriculum which has literacy at the heart of every activity and learning opportunity.
IDEA is headed by Ashleigh Thompson, a teacher, children’s author and a passionate advocate of the importance of developing a love of literacy from the very earliest age.
Ashleigh delivered a highly detailed and thought provoking talk to representatives of two schools and five nurseries from across Dubai. Her presentation touched on a wide range of topics, from the teaching of vocabulary, to the use of phonics in Early Years settings to how practitioners could provide deeper learning from the simple use of story books.
Ashleigh then posed a series of challenging questions, which opened our attendees up to a detailed conversation of their achievements, goals and challenges in their own workplace.
The WhichSchoolAdvisor.com team were thrilled to watch teachers and Early Years educators exchange ideas with such positivity and openness. This can surely only benefit the children in their care. Even more, the event proved a great opportunity for schools and nurseries to come together and begin to discuss all-important consistency between the two sectors.
Whilst all our attendees agreed upon the fundamental importance of ‘child led’ learning, this can be interpreted in many different ways. It was thoroughly interesting to hear how children’s passions and interests are nurtured, explored and built upon in so many different settings. Though our initial conversation began with literacy, we soon moved on to the importance of a child centred lesson planning style – so much so it was agreed that this topic would be the focus of our next forum, to be held at Children’s Oasis in February.
Watch this space!
With thanks to:
