Through my 5 months internship experiences that I have gained at MOE Kindergarten Riverside, I have developed a set of personal educational philosophy, beliefs, and values that I will carry with me in my future career as a professional early childhood educator.
As a future early childhood educator, I believe that children are strong, active, curious and competent learners who learn best through purposeful play by involving real-life objects and varied learning experiences. Through active explorations, children will discover the different innovative ways to work things out on their own. Besides, I also believe that the quality social interactions that are respectful, reciprocal and responsive will also help children to build on their own ideas and concepts together.
My educational philosophy was inspired by a Russian Psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s Social Constructivism theory (Powel & Kalina 2009) who believed in social interaction plays an integral part of children’s learning and development. Vygotsky proposed that children’s learning is shaped by their social experiences and interactions with their peers, older children, and adults. This is similarly in line with MK’s belief who seek to nurture children holistically through play so that they are confident and have strong social skills.
I also believe that every child is a special individual and they learn and develop at different rates and paces. Children are unique individuals that have come to us, as an early educator with different knowledge and skill levels. Therefore, it is also crucial for educators to know what students like, what students are capable of, and how they are developing and learning.
Hence, by having small group differentiated instruction involves altering the implementation and design of the lesson and activities, it helps to meet the needs of every individual child. To cope with children’s learning needs and abilities, I support MK Riverside’s idea of having differentiated instructions in class in terms of their Language and Numeracy lesson that has been planned in a way that shows more significant to the children’s learning. In every class, children are broken into a small group based on their different levels of learning abilities. Children will be provided with different learning materials that catered to their level.
