As a facilitator of learning, educators play a vital role to stimulate children’s thinking and extend their learning. This is achieved by creating a safe, conducive and stimulating learning environment for children and designing meaningful learning experiences based on their interests, needs and readiness.

What are the benefits?

Enhanced Engagement: It creates a learning environment that is more engaging and motivating for children. By providing opportunities for exploration, discovery, and choice, this encourages children to participate more actively and take ownership of their learning.
Promotes Meaningful Connections: It allows children to construct their knowledge and connect new concepts to their existing knowledge and experiences. This leads to deeper understanding of the concepts and skills.
Development of Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving Skills: It encourages children to think critically, solve problems, and make decisions independently. This fosters their ability to analyse information, evaluate different perspectives, and come up with creative solutions.
Fosters Social and Emotional Competencies: It promotes collaborative learning, teamwork and communication among children. They learn to work together, share ideas, and resolve conflicts constructively and learn to take different perspectives. This develops social and emotional skills that are crucial for life.

How can you do it?

Educators use their knowledge, skills and resources, and work closely with families to extend and enrich children’s learning. It is important to consider these for effective facilitation of children’s learning:

Understanding children’s learning

Observe and monitor what and how children are learning to plan, scaffold and extend their learning.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) (Vygotsky, 1978): This refers to the zone where children can learn successfully with guidance from teachers or more capable peers but not independently yet. Through observations, you can identify children’s ZPD and provide appropriate support within their ZPD to help them progress.
Interests and abilities: Recognise that children come from diverse backgrounds and experiences. Consider their interests and abilities when planning learning experiences to ensure that they are engaging and relevant to their needs.
Observe and Monitor: Regularly observe and assess children's learning to identify their strengths and areas for improvement. Document children's learning through various methods, such as anecdotal notes, photographs, and video recordings, to monitor their progress. Use this information to inform future planning to help children make connections between concepts, ideas and experiences.

Using appropriate strategies and resources

Use a wide range of teaching strategies and resources to actively engage and facilitate children’s learning

Use a variety of teaching strategies and resources: Employ a diverse range of teaching strategies to engage children actively as constructors of knowledge and cater to different learning interests and needs. Scaffold their learning through purposeful play, and quality interactions and make use of the learning cycle to facilitate children’s learning.
Information and Communication Technology (ICT): Use ICT tools intentionally and where appropriate to enhance learning experiences, provide access to diverse information and resources, and promote digital literacy skills. Bear in mind the guiding principles for the use of ICT in preschool centres.
Culturally responsive resources: Incorporate culturally responsive resources and materials that reflect the diversity of children's backgrounds and experiences, promoting inclusivity and a sense of belonging.
Reflective practice: Regularly reflect on your teaching practice and the effectiveness of your learning experiences. You may refer to the cycle of reflective practice and use data and feedback to inform continuous improvement.

Organising the learning environment

Safe and stimulating: Create safe and stimulating learning spaces that are well-organized, accessible, and promote exploration, discovery, and active learning.
Flexible and adaptable: Design learning spaces to be flexible and adaptable to accommodate different activities, learning styles, and group sizes.

Collaborating with families

Family members can offer insightful information about the children’s interests, abilities, daily experiences and progress.

Building strong partnerships: Establish open and respectful communication channels with families to foster a collaborative partnership. Involve families in planning and decision-making processes related to their children's well-being and development.
Gathering insights and promote learning connections: Actively seek information from families about their children's interests, abilities, daily experiences, and progress. Use this information to design learning experiences that cater to their diverse learning needs and make meaningful links across ideas, concepts and experiences at home.
Sharing observations and progress: Regularly communicate with families about their children's learning and development, sharing observations, progress reports, and opportunities for collaboration.

Facilitating Children’s Learning when Face-to-Face Learning is Disrupted

Disruptions to children’s face-to-face learning may take place in time of crisis or emergency. During such disruptions, educators may consider the following:

Expectations of remote learning

Remote learning or home-based activities are not meant to replicate the full centre’s curriculum or learning experience.
The same teaching and learning pace is not expected for remote learning.
Remote learning must be manageable for children, parents, teachers and centres.
The duration of remote learning should not exceed 2 hours a day. The time spent on screen devices for remote learning should not exceed 1 hour a day and there should be eye-breaks every 10 minutes.

Considerations for planning and implementing remote learning

Continue to promote learning through play and quality interactions as much as possible.
Provide opportunities for learning and development of values, social and emotional competencies, learning dispositions, life skills and motor skills besides the learning areas of Language and Literacy and Numeracy.
Encourage parents to set clear routines for children and tap ordinary moments at home to promote and support children’s learning and development.
When using technology to implement remote learning, preschool centres can consider:

Finding out the types of technology available and how they are used in children’s homes
Any use of technology needs to be actively facilitated by teachers and also be supervised and/or mediated by adults at home
Provide support to teachers in both the technical and pedagogical aspects for remote learning
Provide feedback to parents on their children’s participation in the remote learning activities.

Examples

This video illustrates two of the iTeach principles, Teachers as Facilitators of Learning and Children as Constructors of Knowledge.

The teacher facilitates children’s learning by:

Breaking down an activity into bite-size tasks
Modelling the process
Giving clear instructions
Asking open-ended questions

Resources

NEL Framework 2022

Values, Social and Emotional Competencies, Learning Dispositions

Values

Social and Emotional Competencies

Learning Dispositions

Learning Areas

iTeach Principles

Use of ICT