December 17, 2013

Transfer your dominance

During my seminars I always draw attention to the dominance of the teacher.
Children are hungry to do it themselves, but many teachers think that 'spoon feeding' education is the most effective way.
Some of them even try to convince that by instruction to the whole group of silent children in the classroom, they learn most.
But this teacher doesn't understand why there are so many questions left after this kind of  instruction.

Children has to take as many initiatives themselves as possible.
Helen Parkhurst says: "Under the Dalton Plan the teacher's principal job is to instruct or teach by answering the questions asked by individual children or groups of children".
I was nicely surprised that I found an article this morning in the newspaper in which the provocating photo's in my PowerPoint were given a scientific basis.
Larissa Samuelson, professor psychology at the University of Iowa researched the behaviour of very young children. She noticed very soon that children who were allowed to make a mess during their activities, were learning very quickly new words.

See an article about this here



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