Tuesday, July 27, 2010

A useful resource for teachers to enable children to predict, hypothesize and reflect.

Being an early childhood student, I was searching the Flickr creative commons photos for something that I could use in the early years context. I think that this photo would be very useful across many KLA's; it could be used to promote higher order thinking and for interesting and engaging collaborative learning activities.

This image could be used to support the productive pedagogies framework (Department of Education, 2002) by promoting connectedness to the world. By giving value and meaning to real world problems and encouraging learners to reflect on relevant personal experiences, the learning manager is able to promote higher order thinking. A problem based curriculum and a driving question, such as 'what might the people in this photo need to do to avoid injury/damage' would allow children to predict, construct knowledge and critically examine contrasting and conflicting ideas. This, in turn allows for deep knowledge and understanding.

Thought provoking images are useful tools to stimulate, transform, support and enhance student learning in an early childhood context. SOSE is an obvious KLA where images can be utilised, however, with some creativity a learning manager could incorporate Science and Technology (e.g weather patterns and investigation) The Arts (e.g. analyzing images for colour, shape, line, texture, intention, looking at the positioning of features etc) Health and P.E (health implications, physical characteristics) English (analyzing and writing narratives, personal recounts, searching for adjectives) Mathematics (looking at patterns, estimating) all that is needed is some imagination and knowledge of how to access interesting and thought provoking images!

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