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About Dr. Widad Ashurax
Expertise
I can answer questions pertaining to the following areas: Teaching methods, evaluation of teachers, teachers` moral, curriculum design and market research, students` attrition and completion rate, students` counseling and career planning in Post Secondary Education.

Experience
I was a President of private two-year school of business for over ten years, Vice president for three years, and a director of education for two years for a two-year college. Additionally, I have over twenty years of teaching experience in high school and post secondary education combined.

Organizations
retired

Education/Credentials
Doctorate degree in Education from Nova University
Master degree in Early Childhood from Nova University

Awards and Honors
School evaluator for the Accrediting Council of Independent Colleges & schools in Washington DC.

You are here: Experts > Education > Private Schools > Education Issues > help children share ideas

Education Issues - help children share ideas

Expert: Dr. Widad Ashurax - 10/23/2009

Question
Hi Dr Widad,
Please, Sally is one of the older children in the children service centre and likes to assist in organising and playing games with younger children. I would like her to organise some simple indoor games to play with younger children in the afternoon.
How would I help Sally to share her ideas, discuss limitations and solve problems that may arise in the indoor games she wishes to organise? If some of the ideas cannot be made due to resource limitations, safety factors or legal requirements, how would I acknowledge this and discuss possible options and alternatives with Sally?

Thank you for your help Dr Widad

Regard Emma

Answer
Dear Emma:

I am sure you realize that teaching and working with young children can be fun, challenging, and rewarding as well, especially, if being with them is your actual enjoyment.

When working with different age level in the same classroom can be demanding and sometimes may require time, patience, understanding, and willingness to solve problems as they develop.

By indicating that Sally is one of the oldest children in the center, she then may require more challenge than the rest of the group of children with whom you deal.

I suggest, first of all, that you need to plan ahead to be able to understand Sally’s way of thinking by providing more time with her whenever possible. Secondly, try to study Sally’s pattern of behavior to be able to understand what makes Sally insist on certain things to do or make that might be difficult to implement due to certain factors as you pointed out. Thirdly, you need to know Sally’s limitations intellectually, socially physically, and especially psychologically. Knowing more about “Sally” will make your job a lot easier than expected.

If Sally likes to lead but has a hard time sharing things with the rest of the class, then you need to concentrate on this area of weaknesses by teaching her what and how sharing can be by example. Find out the best books available on the subject of sharing and make a story time to let Sally as well as the rest of your class understand the beauty of sharing. This method of indirect communication may apply to many of the sensitive issues you might have with Sally or with the rest of your class. Remember, kids learn better by imitation

Since Sally’s strong trait is organization, then try to build your efforts to motivate her to help you with the class activities specifically from this area alone as a starting point. One of the simple activities that you might try with Sally is to help her learn how to encage her classmates by picking a child or two to sort out and organize with her their class books, chairs and the like (with your supervision.).

Additionally, for example, pick Sally to be the leader in this following game. Let her draw a living room in a large card board type of paper. Let each kid choose an item from the drawing. Moreover, to increase Sally’s motivational level in this game is to encourage her to help each child how to color his/her chosen item from the drawing she made. Prepare each child individually to cut his/her item from the drawing (use safety scissors for the little hands with your supervision.) Let Sally always be involved in the process of this game by having her help her classmates organize the furniture back in a way they see it fit with her guidance (all must understand the game ahead of time to prevent disorder!)

This type of activities and similar others would require from each kid a considerable amount of patience, along with sharing, playing together as a team, and also giving turns to each other.

Encaging Sally in similar games and activities as suggested above may help her release some of the uneasiness when playing with the rest of the class. You will become aware of some improvements with time in Sally’s behavior and attitude toward certain problems which you mentioned above.

If more help is needed, please let me know and thank you for sharing your concerns with me.

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