Dubai International Private School: Empowering Minds, Inspiring Hearts, Shaping the Future. مدرسة دبي الدولية الخاصة: تمكين العقول، إلهام القلوب، تشكيل المستقبل
Dubai International Private School: Empowering Minds, Inspiring Hearts, Shaping the Future. مدرسة دبي الدولية الخاصة: تمكين العقول، إلهام القلوب، تشكيل المستقبل
Dubai International Private School: Empowering Minds, Inspiring Hearts, Shaping the Future. مدرسة دبي الدولية الخاصة: تمكين العقول، إلهام القلوب، تشكيل المستقبل
Kindergarten Curriculum Overview
Kindergarten Curriculum Overview
The Kindergarten curriculum at DIPS-G follows California State Standards. The KG “Integrated Process Curriculum” and thematic units are broad, relevant, and establish a strong foundation for learning in the early years in a safe and caring play-based environment. This serves as the driving force for learning and promotes the social, physical, intellectual, cultural, emotional, and creative development of the children.
Children in KG show strong qualities of personal development as they build a strong sense of responsibility and very positive attitudes to learning. The KG program encourages the growth of positive and socially responsible attitudes in children. It strives to help young children experience interpersonal relationships with their peers as well as with adults and develop self-control and self-resilience.
The balanced curriculum promotes children’s personal and academic development through a variety of appropriate experiences and activities. It also encompasses a wide variety of purposeful play, hands-on activities, classroom experiences, and inquiry-based approach which are fundamental to the way young children learn. This promotes higher level thinking skills while stimulating curiosity, observation, experimentation, investigative skills, and problem solving into the daily instruction.
The consistently good provision for children in the KG leads to a happy environment where children are engaged and achieve well in all subjects. Teachers in KG have excellent subject knowledge, understand each child as an individual, and use effective teaching strategies by reflecting on the ways young children develop and learn best in different ways. Child initiated play-based activities and teacher-designed experiences are incorporated throughout the day in KG. Children have the opportunity to participate in extensive and fun real-world activities that maximize their experiences with the world around them. Content area subject matter is woven into learning experiences and projects allowing children to develop new understandings by making meaningful connections, during hands-on applications, to work and play independently. Competence and skill development in all learning areas are optimized from these experiences.
The programs within KG curriculum are planned so that the sequence and timing of the content and the variety of activities maintain all children’s interest and provide evident and visible progress in learning for all children. The goal is to meet each child at his/her developmental level and bridge individual developmental differences.
The SEVEN Areas of Learning in Kindergarten at DIPS-G
Personal, Social and Emotional Development:
Personal, Social, and Emotional Development helps your child to manage feelings and behavior and to make relationships.
0-11 Months: An infant will show a different range of emotions, such as happy smiles, cries to show discomfort, and excitement by body gestures.
16-26 Months: Children will begin to engage in cooperative play.
22-36 Months: Children begin to understand about boundaries and routines. 30-50 Months: Children begin to be aware of their own feelings and to respect their peers’ interests and feelings.
Encourage your child to express their own preferences and interests, carry out small responsibilities at home, and appreciate every small task completed by saying, “Well Done!”
Communication and Language:
Communication and language consist of Listening and Attention and Understanding and Speaking.
0-11 Months: For an infant, communication and language is all about turning towards a familiar sound and then locating the sounds with accuracy.
16-26 Months: Children’s understanding is about identifying objects within a
group.
22-36 Months: Children begin constructing simple sentences.
30-50 Months: Children begin to connect ideas from past and present.
Literacy:
Literacy is linked with speech and language writing skills. To promote literacy in the early years of your child’s holistic development, encourage your child to look at books and handle books with respect as it provides knowledge.
0-11 Months: An infant will begin to feel the textures and will look at different pictures and images.
16-26 Months: Children will begin to show interested in songs and rhymes and may have his/her favorites.
22-36 Months: Children will begin to fill in the missing words of songs, rhymes, and stories.
30-50 Months: Children will begin to structure a story line based on their imagination skills and favorite characters.
Writing skills develop when your child has developed his/her fine motor skills. For example, they may begin to hold a pencil, marker, or a paintbrush using a tripod grip. Encourage your child to scribble and make different patterns or marks that they see in a different place or from a book.
Mathematics:
Mathematics can be taught through plan and hands-on practical skills. Through play-based activities, your child will be able to understand concepts of numbers, shape, space, and measurement.
0-11 Months: An infant will enjoy crawling and rolling over on a big shape floor puzzle.
16-26 Months: Children will begin to explore sand pit areas by filling and emptying containers.
22-36 Months: Children will be able to use the language of size (small, medium, big).
30-50 Months: Children will be able to count and match numbers in a set.
Understanding the World:
Mathematics can be taught through plan and hands-on practical skills. Through play-based activities, your child will be able to understand concepts of numbers, shape, space, and measurement.
0-11 Months: An infant will enjoy crawling and rolling over on a big shape floor puzzle.
16-26 Months: Children will begin to explore sand pit areas by filling and emptying containers.
22-36 Months: Children will be able to use the language of size (small, medium, big).
30-50 Months: Children will be able to count and match numbers in a set.
Physical Development:
Physical Development is about moving and handling, health and self-care, self- confidence, and self-awareness. Promote “I can do it by myself”, encourage your child to eat their snacks independently, tidy up the table after mealtimes, and wear shoes and socks independently.
0-11 Months: For an infant, physical development is about making movements with arms and legs and learning to gain control over their body movements.
16-26 Months: Children will begin expressing likes and dislikes by trying different food textures.
22-36 Months: Children begin to express their own preferences and interests. 30-50 Months: Children begin to dress on their own without any support being
offered to him/her and to understand how to handle equipment in a safe manner.
Expressive Arts and Design:
Expressive Arts and Design extends your child’s creativity, curiosity, exploration, and play. Expressive Arts and Design involves exploring media and materials and being imaginative.
0-11 Months: An infant will develop this area of learning through sensory motor skills.
16-26 Months: Children will develop in this area through music by using their whole body and gestures.
22-36 Months: Children will begin to experiment mixing colors and create different sounds, such as a high and low pitch sound using various materials and objects.
30-50 Months: Children will engage in pretend play and build stories around objects and small world toys.
Continuous Provision and Enhanced Provision
1. Continuous Provision
In Kindergarten, we recognize continuous provision as the resources we offer children are part of an enabling safe environment for children to explore independently. It is a selection of resources that continue children’s learning and teachers not only provide a high-quality environment but also support their children’s ability to interact with the resources. When children engage with continuous provision, teachers can make careful observations.
Continuous provision allows children to make choices and initiate play. As a result of teachers’ observations in the continuous provision, we enhance our learning environment in order to provide additional learning opportunities. This will move children’s learning forward.
Importance of Continuous Provision
As teachers, it is essential to fully understand both what continuous provision is and how it helps support children’s development. Crucially, effective continuous provision should provide children with the opportunity to demonstrate the characteristics of effective teaching and learning. For example, in the construction area, children may independently investigate how high they can build a tower by using wooden blocks. Trying to arrange the blocks in different ways or testing if they can add any other construction materials to their tower to make it sturdier, demonstrates aspects of both playing and exploring.
Continuous provision also enables children to return to their explorations and consolidate their learning over the course of a day or a more extended period. When children do this, they can explore what happens to things as they change over time and make changes to explore new ideas. Continuous provision also allows children to make choices and initiate play without interaction with an adult.
What Effective Continuous Provision Looks Like
Continuous provision transcends all areas of learning. When preparing resources for continuous provision, we do the following:
- Make sure that each area set up for continuous provision has the necessary resources to encourage children to play and explore in a variety of ways.
- Offer a range of high-quality resources that will act as a good starting point for the children’s explorations.
- Use open-ended questioning to engage the children in conversations and prompt their creative thinking.
- Give children time to revisit what they did yesterday, last week, or even a few weeks ago.
Teachers’ Role in Continuous Provision
Even with continuous provision, the teacher’s role is crucial. It’s important not only to provide a high-quality environment but also support children’s ability to interact with the resources. When children engage with continuous provision, teachers can take the opportunity to interact with the children more, and not just make formal observations, which a is a key aspect of learning in kindergarten.
Creating a well-oiled environment also means that teachers establish rules, boundaries and behavioral expectations. Once children are clear about the rules and what’s expected, they will then be able to carry out their explorations with an increased sense of confidence. If children do not know their boundaries, then they will often return to ‘familiar’ play, which is less challenging.
As mentioned, one of the most enjoyable things a teacher can do is to play alongside the children. This helps to model language and ideas and will strengthen relationship with the children. It also gives the teacher the opportunity to ask questions and make suggestions, extending the children’s learning even further
2. Enhanced Provision
Enhanced Provision adds more challenge to continuous provision. It suggests new ways to use the basic set of resources, enriches the play, extends the children’s ideas and moves their learning forward.
Importance of Enhanced Provision
It is especially prominent in Kindergarten where children are encouraged to experiment and practice their physical development through creative play. Enhanced provision is the process which makes sure that children have the access and the resources to carry out this creativity, with physical activities and challenges being provided to children as part of their everyday classroom learning.
What Effective Enhanced Provision Looks Like
Enhanced provision consists of the extra material and resources teachers provide for children that provide more challenges to continuous provision.
- By building on the observations that they have made while watching students play creatively in their continuous provision areas, special themes and activities can be supplied to children as part of enhanced provision.
- It is a great way for teachers to use the classroom to their advantage to strengthen and bolster their children’s independent learning techniques and help students to broaden their horizons.
- By using enhanced provision, children will continue on their journey along the learning continuum and begin to gain some of the attributes that will see them progress through the areas of learning.
Some of the key benefits that enhanced provision are:
- By building on the observations that they have made while watching students play creatively in their continuous provision areas, special themes and activities can be supplied to children as part of enhanced provision.
- It is a great way for teachers to use the classroom to their advantage to strengthen and bolster their children’s independent learning techniques and help students to broaden their horizons.
- By using enhanced provision, children will continue on their journey along the learning continuum and begin to gain some of the attributes that will see them progress through the areas of learning.
Some of the key benefits that enhanced provision are:
- The chance to consolidate the learning made in continuous provision areas.
- Versatility and adaptability for practitioners/teachers to cater certain tasks according to interest.
- The ability to differentiate tasks based on the abilities of a certain child.
- Greater opportunity to introduce new ideas to students without them having to be formally taught.
- A fantastic way for children to take risks and experiment independently with no fear of negative feedback.
- A great way for children to re-visit some of their learning skills.
Teachers’ Role in Enhanced Provision
Enhanced provision can also be used later on at any stage where teachers are required to observe children and identify opportunities where they can build on their knowledge and master skills. Teachers can enhance concepts through setting learning stations in classrooms.
Some of the many themed activities teachers could include as part of continuous provision enhancements:
- Malleable play
- Wet/dry sand
- Dance/performance area
- Painting/art area