Making Learning Visible

FYI

What is documentation?

Click on the title to see the webpage from Making Learning Visible.

LEarNinG abOUT diFFerent CultURes

Key Principles of Multisensory Instruction

1. Children need to be able to attend to a lesson before they can learn from that lesson.
2. Recognizing the organizational needs of a child's internal sensory system will help you teach more effectively.
3. Rather than define students by labels that designate specific sensory strengths, such as "tactile or visual learners", understand that we all have different strengths and needs and benefit from learning in different ways.
4. Using a multisensory approach with all of your students is more effective and realistic approach than designing an individualized sensory approach for each child or groups of children. From: Multisensory Strategies (by E. McIntosh)

Amigos del Aprendizaje

ADA is a Costa Rican non profit organization dedicated to teacher professional development to enhance the educational opportunities of low-income children. ADA works with teachers, families and community volunteers to promote reading readiness, reading and critical thinking among "at-risk" children in the Costa Rican elementary schools to improve quality of public education. Through its involvement of volunteers, corporate and other sponsor, ADA also promotes a culture of social responsibility and fosters private-public sector partnerships.

Sowing the seeds for a more creative society

These are the main ideas from the presentation of Dr. Mitchel Resnick at the University of Costa Rica (Feb. 2008)

• "There is a growing gap between what is needed to be successful in today's society and the way we are preparing our children for life in that society.
• Kindergarten Learning Approach: "We need to make the rest of school (indeed, the rest of life) more like kindergarten. 
• Schools were not designed to help students develop as creative thinkers.
• The traditional kindergarten approach to learning is well-matched to the needs of the current society, and should be extended to all learners.
• For today's children, nothing is more important than learning to think creatively-learning to come up with innovative solutions to the unexpected situations that will continually arise in their live.
• The goal is not to nurture the next Mozart or Einstein, but to help everyone become more creative in the ways they deal with everyday problems.
• Children with different learning interests and different learning styles can all use the same materials (finger paint, wooden blocks, dramatic play puppets), but each in his or her own personal way.
• I believe that digital technologies, if properly designed and supported, can extend the kindergarten learning approach, so that learners of all ages can continue to learn in the kindergarten style-and, in the process, continue to develop as creative thinkers."

I am a preschool teacher at Pan-American School.

I teach Kindergarten!