In my first visit to a school, I met with teachers in the kindergarten and primary grades. The teachers said that developing a positive self-concept was their primary task to promote a positive atmosphere within the classroom. This positive atmosphere enabled the young children to gain a positive yet realistic image of themselves as learners. It also avoids any negativity as much as possible. The teachers also have a positive attitude towards the young pupils. This positive attitude results in a good learning atmosphere. Most of the teachers believe that their students will achieve their goals. The teachers in the school influence the development of the positive self-concept. The teachers said that they achieve this by providing a democratic classroom atmosphere where every pupil is supposed to think of himself as a responsible citizen and where each pupil feels free to express his opinions frankly and openly.
The school has very intelligent and disciplined pupils. For example, there was a certain student by the name of Peter who welcomed us very warmly in the school by citing a poem which left everybody feeling welcomed. The physical environment of the classrooms encourages student learning. The classrooms have movable furniture which can be easily reorganized and can be used as individual student work areas. There are individual small flat-topped tables which are accompanied by comfortable chairs that fit easily under the tables. The chairs promote good posture and encourage face-to-face interaction. The classrooms also have enough space to allow movement activities and ease of access in or out of the classroom particularly for those students with special needs.
The classrooms in the school are student-centered. High performance was witnessed in the school because it was open, friendly, and culturally inviting. Instructional arrangements also allowed the pupils to interact with one another and use collaborative learning techniques. Teachers organized or wrote their own curriculum. Rather than organizing by subject area, teachers aligned themselves more by grade level and worked together to write different units or design instructional materials, activities, and strategies geared to meet essential elements of the curriculum. Textbooks were acknowledged but teachers made great use of the curriculum they had developed within their grade, school, or district. Most teachers stressed that they rarely used textbooks for anything more than a resource for a homework assignment.
The school uses cognitive theory which stresses the importance of what goes on inside the learner. The teachers help the students to perceive information, interpret it based on what is known, and then reorganize the information into new insights or understanding. Cognitive learning theory includes several known perspectives, such as gestation, information processing, human development, social constructivist, and social cognition theory.
On observing a kindergarten for one hour, I realized that the classroom was based on the more contemporary emergent literacy model. This was based on three aspects which include symbolic transformation for example using a toy banana to represent a telephone. The second aspect is meta play which is linked to metalinguistic awareness and involves children’s awareness about the structures and functions of language. The third aspect is narrative which helps the children to think about and respond to a text.
In third-grade classrooms, phonics and spelling instructions are used. The teachers describe a practical, easy-to-use method of teaching children how to spell. Practice is encouraged and monitored and teaching occurs in short sessions each and every day. In order to teach reading, the students say the words and sentences corresponding to the text and understand.