Child development

Another activity we made was to read an article about child development. Child development is all the changes that occur on a child’s life until adolescence. Humans change over the time because this is something natural. These changes happen due to many factors, for example a child is influenced by his family, his friends, his school and also by his culture and his society. Children mature over the time and they improve their knowledge and abilities. All educators need to be knowledgeable about children development because they have to know what methods they have to use to teach them. They also have to know each child individually in order to help them if they had some problems. So we, as future teachers, have to be conscious of the importance and influences that we have on a child ideas and on his development.

The article also presented some theorists  and their approaches to child development, some of them see it as a largely individual (like Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner or Sigmund Freud)  and some others were concerned more with the influences of society, history culture and context (like Lev Vygotsky, Barbara Rogoff, or Loris Malaguzzi).

Last issue of the article was about ‘sustained shared thinking’.  The learning that took place between a pair of learner and adult is called ‘sustained share thinking’ in which also the adult is able to help the child to take the next step in learning. Teachers have to pay attention to the behave and the feelings of students and encourage them to improve. We also have to know that we can learn from children (they know more about technologies for example), so it is a process in which each one learn from the other.

Finally in the last class we were talking about some methods of learning. There are three: behaviourism, constructivism and socio-constructivism.

- Behaviourism: we learn by following someone (teachers, parents, friends), in a class the figure of the teacher is the one who guides the group.

- Constructivism: we construct new knowledge through previous knowledge.

- Socio-constructivism: we build knowledge in community with interactions between the learner and others. The teacher helps and guides students to improve their knowledge with the ‘zone of proximal development’ (ZPD) and also he has the role of stimulating students.

Teaching activity

In Didactic classes we have done many things so I am going to explain all but in different entries.

One day we had to prepare in groups a teaching exercise in which we had to explain children how to add and substract. We prepared in small groups and then each group had to explain to all the class as if they were in a real class with children. The problem was that not all the children were Spanish so we had to explain it in English. Saadet also explained it in Turkish so we learned some words and Jesse taught in Finish so we learned some numbers in this language.

This was a good experience because we had to think as if we were real teachers and face the class. We had to use easy vocabulary in order to students could understand us. I learned how to talk to children, the importance to make funny classes so that students don’t get bored and different ways to explain things.

In the future, when we were teachers we will have to explain things very clear and if someone doesn’t understand it we will have to use another method so that they finally understand it. The aim of the teachers is not to explain things once and go to another thing, the aim is to help students to understand things and improve their knowledge. It is very important to know that the most important figure of the class is the student and not the contents.

I hope to do more activities like this because we can learn many things and train ourselves so that in the future we know how to face a real class.

The development of our knowledges

From the first day, we have learnt many different things in Didactics classes. The first day Mina gave us some questions to answer and this was a good work because I had to think on things that I had never care about before. Some of the questions were the meaning of education for us, the definition of primary education, of teaching, of learning… and I had to think a lot.

The second day we learnt the main aims of education (social development, equal opportunity, preparation for work, democracy, parental participation…) and we reflect on which were the most important for us.

Other day we had to read the LOE and LOMCE and compare them. We did this activity to understand the meaning of curriculum, the aims of education, how education has changed, the basic contents of schooling…

Another task we had to do was to read some articles about the thoughts of different philosophers, in order to know different points of view about the education and its aims.

Last day we were talking deeper about the curriculum and its levels. It has four levels: the first one is the difference between the national curriculum and the communities curriculum including the education aims, the development, the pedagogical methods, the objectives, competences, contents, methodology, assessment…

The second level is the Center’s Educational Project and the tools each school can use. The third level is the class programme where each teacher has to plan their subject, how they will teach it and with what objectives.

The last level is the special attention to children who need it because they have problems to follow a normal class, so they need special teachers and special classes to encourage their development.