Final Personal Reflection

I want to thank the students for making some of the comments and feedbacks on my blog because it really gives me many new ideas, which helps me to learn more about how to work with children.

After reading the feedback from other students, it gives me many different and good ideas of what I could do with the children to help extend their knowledge and learning. I also learnt the different types of activities that I could set up for the children. For example, one of the students suggested that I could use different materials and tools for next time when I bring out the activity of tools for the children to fix, or play with. These are some of the new ideas that I gained from reading the feedbacks.

Some more things I learnt from others’ feedbacks are that adding in extra materials into a particular activity can also help the children extend the children’s learning. It is also a good way to make an activity more exciting and creative. I noticed that empowering can be an important technique to have as well because as stated by MacNaughton and Williams (2004), empowering can “ensure fair, respectful and non-exploitative relationships” and “ensuring children have the ability for self-expression and experience self-esteem” (p. 280).

As mentioned by the students’ feedback, I realized to remember that asking children to share and turn taking is good skills to practice with children.    

With all these new ideas, I hope that I will be able to put it into practice for the children at my centre next time, so that hopefully, it could let the children learn more from doing so.

Overall, I think that the people, places, things and events on children’s learning and development are very significant. I think that they are significant because according to Dunkin and Hanna (2001), “to foster young children’s learning and development involves more than simply offering a programme and an environment for them to operate in” (p. 1). To continue about this, Somerset (2000) mentions that “children who are surrounded by people who respond…will learn” (p. 6).

Also, Somerset (2000) describes that in a centre, “a child can explore and experiment in the world of people and how to relate to them, the world of nature and how it behaves, and the physical world and how it works” (p. 15).

Lastly, as discussed by The Ministry of Education (1996), “children develop the ability to identify and use information from a range of sources” and “the ability to represent their discoveries, using creative and expressive media and the technology associated with them” (p. 88).

To conclude in evaluation, I think that these theories from literatures explains and states the significance of the people, places, things and events that links to children’s learning and development. So, I think that these facts, (people, places, things and events) are all very important and significant towards children’s learning and development.