When your child enters into an Early Childhood classroom, they will quickly discover the types of activities and lessons that they like the best. It is clear that children have unique learning styles from the moment they begin their educational experience. Your child will need time to explore the formal preschool classroom setting and should be given an opportunity to develop their own learning pace. As such, it’s imperative that you select a good preschool in Singapore for your child, in which teachers will differentiate learning to accommodate different learning styles, levels of learning and speed of learning in the early childhood setting.
Benefits of Differentiated Learning for Early Childhood Students
Most preschool students are walking into a school setting for the first time in their lives, and they are just beginning to understand what learning looks and feels like. These are a few of the benefits that your child will realise when there is differentiated learning experiences in their kindergarten classroom:
- Your child will enjoy various experiences within their preschool classroom and learn more about their own interests.
- Your child will have the chance to make choices, giving them the confidence to try new things.
- Your child will be supported by their teachers on an individual basis and will be given the tools they need to reach the next milestone.
Key Practices at OWIS to Bring Differentiated Learning into Preschool Classrooms
At OWIS, we believe that play-based learning is best for your early childhood student. As this is their first experience in a classroom setting, we know that it’s important that your child has an opportunity to explore the room, socialise with their new friends and play in a way that is safe, productive and fun.
With play at the centre of our kindergarten programme, we have adopted these best practices to differentiate learning in the early childhood setting:
- Our early childhood teachers provide open-ended resources and provocations. Provocations are open-minded exercises that are used frequently at OWIS. These exercises are designed to provide students with an immersive and stimulating experience that will help them form connections to the topic they are studying.
- Our preschool educators promote student agency by giving our youngest learners voice and choice in their classroom experiences. In the Early Childhood classrooms, students can visit various centres and themed areas that often relate to the unit that they are working on. For example, during a unit on ocean life, students may be able to visit a sensory tub table filled with water and seashells, pebbles, fish toys and sea creatures to explore and role-play with.
- Our preschool teachers differentiate targets and challenges for each individual child. There is a wide range of abilities and strengths that students exhibit during these formative years, and teachers will create targets for children based on their own unique needs.
- Each Early Childhood classroom has a teacher and teaching assistant, but the classroom itself serves as the third teacher. The kindergarten classroom is designed to be a place where students can explore, play and engage in self-guided learning.
- Our teachers play the role of observers in the Early Childhood classrooms. Teachers will closely watch as students choose the activities and toys that they like the best, and design learning experiences that appeal to their interests. Teachers also find out and assess where students are at, in their learning journey, during this time and plan for the next step.
Differentiation provides your young learner with an opportunity to develop and grow according to their own interests, abilities and strengths. By differentiating learning in preschool classrooms, OWIS teachers offer students a positive first experience in school and help these young learners to feel confident as they head into primary school. At OWIS, our Early Childhood education adopts all of the best practices in differentiated learning to help all of our learners succeed.
OWIS offers two campuses in Singapore: one is a Kindergarten to Grade 12 (K-12) school at Nanyang, and the other is a Kindergarten to Grade 5 campus in Suntec Convention Centre. To learn more about our Early Childhood programme, contact us today to schedule a virtual tour.
Please note: All the images in this blog were taken in pre-Covid times.
(This blog was originally written in collaboration with Ms Min Joo (Eileen) Cho, former Early Childhood Teacher, OWIS Nanyang.)
