The Department of Early Childhood Education hosted a knowledge exchange seminar in February. The key speaker, Dr. Tricia Wong, gave an overview on how to foster the development of young children using different resources in the community.
Nowadays, it is common for kindergartens to host outing visit for children each year. However, how can such activity be organized in a systematic way and provides the best opportunity for learning? Dr. Wong shed light on these questions by introducing one of her recent Quality Education Fund (QEF) Projects – 幼儿社区学堂 – which trained and assisted kindergartens to engage children in exploring community facilities, such as libraries, natural parks, museums, nursing homes, and other governmental buildings. She used real case examples to illustrate the multiple steps of developing a community exploration activity: 1) searching for a theme that match to children’s interest and learning progress, 2) doing research on community resources; 3) designing follow-up learning activities after visit, and 4) conducting effectiveness evaluation. Apparently, community visit is so much more than just going outside and have fun!
She illustrated practical ways to engage children in active learning during a visit. For example, pre-visit activity can be arranged to familiarize children with the theme, so that they can have a higher motivation and better prior knowledge for the exploration. She pointed to the importance of allowing children to ask questions about the environment and to figure out the answers by themselves, so that they could acquire new knowledge through experiential learning.
The key of modern early childhood education is to combine the school, the family, and the community as a social infrastructure that jointly supports child learning. In particular, Dr. Wong reminded us that a new component of the 2017 kindergarten curriculum guide is the effective use of community resources. It is worthwhile for teachers to think about how community exploration can offer a wonderful opportunity to achieve the above educational goals.
