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A Teacher in Training


What To Expect Of A Child-Centered Learning Environment

For parents who are looking for an educational approach that fosters independence, child-centered learning in a charter or private school may be just the solution. In child centered charter schools, the student leads the learning while the teacher serves in a supporting role. In early elementary classrooms, it provides children the opportunity to learn through hands-on exploration and investigation. Here's a look at what you can expect from a typical child-centered classroom.

Teacher's Role

In a child-centered learning environment, the teacher doesn't take charge of the room. Instead of providing direct instruction, the teacher acts as a facilitator, providing guidance and support where needed. For example, a teacher in a child-centered classroom may offer kids a variety of hands-on tools for learning letters, including cutouts and magnetic boards. This gives kids the chance to learn letters on their own while also enhancing their hand-eye coordination.

Learning Centers

Teachers who are creating a child-centered learning environment will create learning centers for kids to move through lessons on their own. These classrooms typically feature several different types of learning centers where children can move from one center to another independently. This type of design is convenient for kids, because they are able to move at their own pace.

The teacher's primary role with learning centers is to decide what type of learning materials to make available in each learning center, and how long to leave each one up before moving on to a new skill. Most of these learning centers are available for days or weeks before being shifted to new or different projects.

Building different learning centers allows children to focus on numbers, letters and other core skills throughout the day. While kids are moving from workstation to workstation, the teacher can move between groups and offer support as needed instead of having to provide direct instruction.

Brief Instruction

In child-led classrooms, the teacher's active instruction time is broken into brief lessons, often called mini lessons. Depending on how the students learn best, this brief instruction time may be in the morning or in the afternoon. This time is often used to model a new concept or introduce a new learning center. Then, kids are given the freedom to explore the environment and the concept on their own.

Cooperative Learning

In child-centered educational environments, kids can benefit from learning with other students. Cooperative learning opportunities give kids a chance to work together to resolve problems and the opportunity to learn from each other's knowledge. Educators in these classrooms will strive to pair students together who have opposing strengths and weaknesses. This lets each child learn from the other and share abilities.

This cooperative learning approach means that the child-centered classroom isn't designed like a traditional educational classroom with a blackboard in front and rows of desks. Instead, these classrooms are set up in groups, with desks facing each other to encourage the kids to work together during class time.

Child-centered classrooms are often louder and more chaotic than a traditional classroom, but when the process is implemented correctly, the chaos of the room is actually more organized than it may seem and the kids are often working excitedly together on a mutual goal.

Interactive Evaluations

Unlike the testing of a traditional classroom, child-centered classrooms are typically evaluated through observation. This is ideal for young kids, since preschool and early elementary students don't typically test well in any form of written testing. Teachers can monitor children as they are completing learning activities to assess their level of understanding of each concept.

If you are looking for a learning environment that allows your child to take control of his or her learning and feel excitement over the discoveries and mastery, a child-centered approach is an ideal selection. Charter schools designed to be child-focused may be a great choice. With the information presented here, you can evaluate this type of learning environment to determine if it is the best fit for your child.

About Me

A Teacher in Training

Even though I'm not a teacher, teaching is where I feel most at home. I actually have quite a bit of experience teaching non-professionally. For example, I teach Bible class to the 14-year-olds in my church, and I have volunteered teaching English abroad in 2 different countries. Granted, it's nothing that anyone would pay me for. I've never really had any formal training. I just love helping others learn something new about the world! But I'm thinking about going back to school to get a teaching certificate. This blog is to help me decide if that's really what I want to do. So while it's mostly for my own personal use, I hope you can learn something new too.