Scope of Learning .1 Introduction

In a narrow sense, the scope of learning of pre-primary education includes the learning of language, mathematics, science and society.

However, in arranging learning activities, over-emphasis on formal teaching should be avoided, and the study of a certain curriculum area should not be confined to a specified period of time. A better approach is to use the available resources of the institution in a flexible way, taking into account children’s interests and abilities in providing an environment which children will find learning relevant.

They can also take the initiative in acquiring knowledge and skills of different curriculum areas as well as developing proper attitudes through direct personal experience.

To enable the pre-primary educator to master the learning objectives of different curriculum areas, teaching principles and the scope of learning of pre-primary education, an introduction on each curriculum area : language activities, early mathematical activities, experience in natural science and social experience is given in the following paragraphs :

5.4.2 Language Activities 1. Introduction

a. Contemporary educationists recommend that young children develop all aspects of language in a relevant and integrated way based on experience. When using language in

meaningful and real situation, learners develop their listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities. Researches have found that children follow a certain developmental pattern in language learning. Before they are admitted into a pre-primary institution, they have already started to learn how to speak through daily conversations, how to read from the various forms of pictures and written language they come across every day, and how to write from drawing and scribbling experience. Thus, a pre-primary language curriculum should centre on devising and providing an enriched language learning environment, in which children can develop their language proficiency through trying out, exploration and interpersonal interaction.

b. To help the pre-primary educator gain a better understanding of the goals for the development of basic language skills of pre-primary children, the aspects of language, reading and writing, as well as the integrated approach to language learning will be discussed in the following paragraphs. It should be noted that even though the development of children’s language generally follows a certain pattern, the pace of development of an individual child’s language may vary, depending on maturity and life experiences. Therefore, a pre-primary institution should set reasonable language requirements according to individual child’s abilities, rather than rigidly

2. The Use of Language a. Objectives :

The use of language includes the ability to understand the language as well as to use it orally. One of the objectives of language activities is to help children learn how to control their pitch, the volume and the tempo of their voice so that they can speak fluently, naturally and clearly. Another objective is to help children learn how to express their ideas using proper sentences and appropriate facial expressions. The principle in designing language activities should thus aim at stimulating children’s thinking and enhancing their language skills so that they can :

i. express their opinions and needs;

ii. ask questions;

iii. explain/justify their behaviour;

iv. report what they experience and see every day; and

v. make use of language to infer, find out and solve problems, or forecast the outcome of events.

b. Principles of Teaching

i. The pre-primary educator should motivate children by using everyday objects or things that interest them, and then encourage them to describe, report, ask questions and express opinions.

ii. The pre-primary educator should start conversations with children at moments such as during assembly, play time,

iii. The pre-primary educator should use words and phrases easily understood by children when talking to them.

iv. The pre-primary educator is a good person for children to talk to. During conversation, she should listen with patience, allow children sufficient time to think and respond and let them know that the educator enjoys listening to them.

v. Conversation should be carried out in a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere. If children have any difficulty in expressing their ideas, the pre-primary educator should give them guidance and encouragement to build up their confidence in speaking.

vi. The pre-primary educator should let children speak more and encourage them to use complete sentences.

vii. Open-ended question-and-answer techniques should be employed more frequently to stimulate children to develop their conversational skills.

viii. Children should be allowed to express different views and have different responses. Generally speaking, it is not necessary to arrive at a consensus or a definite answer.

ix. The pre-primary educator should set an example and help children speak with accurate pronunciation and in a polite and natural manner. She need not deliberately correct children’s faulty pronunciation but should demonstrate the

x. The pre-primary educator should play the role of a good

‘language model’. When children are asked to describe a scene or answer a question, she may either elaborate on what has been said or give them the opportunity to continue without interruption. Correction of their mistakes in vocabulary or sentence structure should be done naturally.

c. Scope of Learning :

To enable children to make good use of their hearing to identify different sounds, to understand what sounds are on so that they can follow instructions and acquire knowledge, it is necessary to help them develop the following basic listening skills :

i. Listening

l the ability to concentrate;

l the ability to distinguish the various properties of sounds, e.g. volume, pitch and duration, etc.;

l learning about the rhythm of sounds;

l distinguishing the relationship between different sounds and their backgrounds;

l using their imagination according to the sounds heard;

and

l remembering different sounds, and reproducing and imitating them.

ii. Conversation

The content of conversation, which includes everyday terms and simple dialogues, should be extended from oneself to concrete matters :

l oneself and one’s next-of-kin;

l things encountered by children in their daily life;

l daily habits and manners;

l conversation on general knowledge; and

l social conversations.

iii. Story-telling

Story-telling is an effective means of developing children’s language. As story books contain pictures and texts which are complementary to each other, they can help children learn new characters and phrases. The plot of a story can attract children’s attention to listen or read.

Children may also learn how to describe the course of events systematically with the right words and sentences.

This will improve their power of expression. The pre-primary educator should choose stories with interesting and healthy content suitable for children and use such teaching aids as puppets, moppets, paper dolls, pictures, slides or real objects. She should present the stories in an interesting way and help to train up children in listening and speaking. After telling a story, the

roles in the story or express their views about the ending of the story, etc..

iv. Simple Nursery Rhymes and Riddles

l When teaching nursery rhymes to children, efforts should be made to arouse their interest in reciting, to drill them in accurate pronunciation and fluency.

Children should not be forced to memorise nursery rhymes in a formal way.

l Nursery rhymes can be taught in conjunction with learning activities and themes. The pre-primary educator can also collect or design her own teaching materials. The content should be related to children’s experience and the words used should be suitable for their age.

l The pre-primary educator should emphasise oral training in teaching nursery rhymes. It is not necessary for children to understand and write the words used in the nursery rhymes.

v. Games

Through games, children will learn to reflect their thoughts, experience and understanding of their surroundings. Children can learn through games and such activities as conversation, listening, describing pictures, nursery rhymes, riddles, and role-play/simulation games.

3. Development of Reading Skills

‘Reading Skills’ refers to the ability to comprehend that symbols carrying meanings, e.g. pictures, signs and words. At the initial stage, the pre-primary educator may allow children to develop their reading experience by comprehending the meanings of some signs or pictures. When they have built up some ideas of symbols, the focus of learning can be shifted to the comprehension of words and sentences.

a. Objectives :

i. To develop children’s interest in reading and help them form good reading habits.

ii. To help children acquire more knowledge through reading.

b. Scope of Activities and Related Guidelines

i. The pre-primary educator may help children practise eye-hand co-ordination and develop their power of identifying different shapes and their memory through various games using tangrams, jigsaw puzzles, sequential pictures and dominoes, etc.. Although all these teaching aids perform similar functions, the pre-primary educator should use a variety of aids so that children will not feel bored. Children should be encouraged to take active part in general activities and activities requiring close observation and comparison.

ii. Books are one of children’s major sources of knowledge

be eager to know the meaning of the words and sentences.

They will thus develop an interest in language and enjoy talking about interesting story plots among themselves.

In selecting reading materials for children, consideration should be given to their age, abilities and experiences.

The following points should be noted :

l the story should be interesting with a healthy theme;

l the plot should be simple and repetitive, with vivid and easily understandable characters to enrich children’s imagination and satisfy their curiosity;

l the illustrations should be colourful and attractive, with simple and vivid characters and are thematically explicit; and

l simple language and vocabulary should be used.

Books for children can either be purchased or produced. The pre-primary educator may encourage children to collect posters, postcards, used books/newspaper, calendars, pictures in advertisements, can labels and photos, or drawings made by themselves, etc. so they can make their own books. If it is necessary to add simple words, the pre-primary educator may ask children to cut out printed words from other books/newspaper or to print words with ready-made rubber stamps or to write down the words that they know.

reading story books. To arouse children’s interest in reading story books, she can tell stories from books, and regularly introduce new books to them.

Sometimes she can read story books with them, giving them some hints and additional information where appropriate. In this way, children will be guided to observe details and acquire a deeper understanding of the stories.

As children’s concentration on reading is of a very short duration, it is not necessary to have a fixed period for class reading. In the classroom, a well-lit book corner should be set up. There should be comfortable chairs or mats for children to sit down and read without being disturbed. The quantity of books need not be large in number. Apart from interesting reading materials, it is important to include books related to the teaching theme of the week. For instance, if the theme is “Family”, books on “Family Members”, “Home Appliances”, “Family Life”,

“Homes of Children in Different Countries” and

“Safety at Home” are all relevant.

Children should be encouraged to read books before and after lessons and during interest activities time, and to put the books back in the right place after

Learning characters is an important transitional stage from the use of spoken language to the learning of written language. In choosing appropriate characters and phrases for identification and reading by children, the pre-primary educator should refer to the following points :

l The characters and phrases chosen, e.g. those characters matching various teaching themes, should be closely related to the everyday life and experience of children, so as to help them master and remember the characters and phrases.

Simple characters should be taught first, and then complex ones. Characters/words of similar forms, like ‘牛’ and ‘羊’, ‘日’ and ‘目’, ‘石’ and ‘右’, ‘中’

and ‘巾’, ‘牙’ and ‘耳’, ‘手’ and ‘生’, should not be taught quickly as they are easily confused.

l Nouns should be taught first, but phrases, or even simple sentences, that are meaningful in children’s daily life or which would arouse their interest can also be used as a medium for children to start learning the written language.

l In introducing new characters, the pre-primary educator can explain with objects, pictures, actions, facial expressions as examples. In order to consolidate children’s knowledge of the language,

cards. She can collect or produce relevant books and put them in the book corner. In addition, she may arrange different kinds of games to provide opportunities for repeated learning. Children will be able to learn characters through such individual and collective activities as matching pictures with word cards, treasure hunts, domino games, fishing and guessing riddles.

l Children should know the shape, pronunciation and meaning of a character. If children are asked to identify a certain character just from its position in the book instead of grasping the shape of the character, their memory of the shape of a character will not be accurate.

4. Writing Ability

As a language skill, writing does not confine itself to writing with a pen. Writing is also a method of expressing ideas in pictures, signs and words. While pre-primary children are more interested in expressing ideas in pictures, 5 to 6 year-old children may be able to write simple sentences under the suitable guidance of adults.

a. Objectives

i. To encourage children to express what they see, hear and feel in the form of pictures.

ii. To enable children to write simple characters and phrases,

l developing their power of co-ordination and their sense of direction;

l cultivating their knowledge of space and angles;

l training their dexterity in the control of their fingers and in the forming of a right-handed or left-handed habit; and

l teaching children to adopt the right way of holding pencils, the right posture in writing, and to master the sequence of strokes.

b. Principles of Teaching

i. Emphasis should be placed on teaching children to relate an incident sequentially.

ii. Children should be encouraged to conduct their writing activities by simply drawing pictures or drawing pictures that matched with words.

iii. The pre-primary educator should not force children to write with pencils/pens before they are ready. Generally speaking, children under the age of four should not be expected to write.

iv. Children often lack confidence when they first start to learn to write characters. The pre-primary educator could encourage children to write in a sand try, on a desk top or on a magic board with their finger tips or to write with a wet finger.

v. Children can practise with different kinds of writing instruments, and writing materials should not be restricted to squared paper and exercise books only.

vi. The characters or phrases selected should be simple and easy to write. Children should be asked to write characters with mainly vertical and horizontal strokes and simple components.

vii. The pre-primary educator should teach children how to identify the different parts of a Chinese character before asking them to learn how to write Chinese characters.

viii. Guidance should be given to children between four and five to help them grasp the correct balance and proportion of Chinese characters. As for children between five and six, more guidance should be given to teach them how to write Chinese characters accurately in terms of strokes and shapes.

ix. Children should only write a few characters, phrases or sentences each time. Excessive writing should be avoided.

x. The pre-primary educator should give appropriate guidance and encouragement to children according to individual need.

c. Scope of Learning : i. Pre-writing activities

control of fingers through play, art and craft activities and routine training.

l The pre-primary educator can ask children to draw any of their personal things that they see in everyday life.

l Only when children grasp the skills of holding the pencil properly can the pre-primary educator ask them to draw lines within a confined area.

ii. Writing characters

l The pre-primary educator should teach children the right posture for writing and the proper way of holding a pencil.

l Children may learn to write characters, phrases and sentences which are simple, familiar, easy to write and related to their daily life.

iii. Writing activities

l Children can be asked to arrange single characters in the right order to form a sentence.

l Children can be asked to fill in the blanks with suitable phrases to form a complete sentence.

l Children can be asked to express an idea in simple pictures and phrases.

In February 1996, the Curriculum Development Council completed its study on Chinese handwriting at the kindergarten level and

have been included in paragraph 4(b). For further details, please refer to Appendix 3.

5. Integrated Approach to Language Learning

In the previous paragraphs, language is looked at through its different aspects of development. The pre-primary educator, however, should adopt a whole-language approach to provide children with integrated language learning experiences. In other words, the pre-primary educator should create a meaningful language learning environment for children so that their experiences in listening, speaking, reading and writing can be integrated into the everyday classroom situation and curriculum activities, and children should be guided to use the verbal and written language in a meaningful way. For the reference of pre-primary educators, some examples of providing children with integrated language learning experiences are listed below :

a. desks, chairs, cabinets and other furniture items in the classroom can be labelled with relevant names;

b. names of children can be written by the pre-primary educator or copied by children on the doors of their lockers, pictures drawn by them, and other work produced by them;

c. information concerning the name of the activity centre, the number of its users, and procedures for using the equipment and materials of the centre can be displayed by means of diagrams and words;

e. children should be encouraged to describe their learning experiences, which the pre-primary educator can record and then relate back to them so that they can understand the connection between verbal and written language;

f. various kinds of reading card writing materials can be placed in the activity centre so that children can write if they wish e.g.

children may be provided with pencils and paper to describe or draw the buildings they have constructed in the block corner;

or they can be asked to follow the instructions in diagrams displayed in the nature corner or cooking corner; and

g. children can be encouraged to report on an outing or a picnic, either verbally or with drawings supplemented by writing which can then be collated into a news-report or a nature diary.

5.4.3 Early Mathematical Activities 1. Objective :

Mathematics is closely related to our daily life. The pre-primary educator should introduce basic knowledge in mathematics to children according to their age, experiences and interests through various kinds of mathematical activities. The objectives of introducing early mathematical concepts are as follows :

a. To help children develop their concentration and memory, and observation and logical thinking.

b. To help children build up the concepts of number, shape, space, time and simple computations.