It’s been a fun, creative and busy week at school. We’ve been working towards a new curriculum that is reflective of evidence-based research for engagement, deeper learning and developing executive functioning skills – the most critical component to school readiness & lifelong success -cultivated during the formative years of a child’s life.
Our new approach is inspired by our love for children’s books; our goal is to inspire a love for literacy from the early years. I am very excited to introduce all our children and families to The REWA Story Curriculum.
Our Story Curriculum uses a distinct approach that engages children with inquiry-based themes that young children are typically interested in. Exciting stories trigger a child’s curiosity to ask questions. To find answers to these questions, children build intrinsic motivation to read, sense, experience and explore. They also spontaneously utilise their language, drawing, movement and creativity to express their findings. Discovery through narrative experience is the process of self-challenging, self-accomplishing, and problem-solving for young children. A child’s curiosity to learn is raised from this wonderful selection of books, and the topics are related to their everyday lives and thematic knowledge. In this way, new knowledge is concrete and meaningful to them.
This is a whole-school approach; what this means for you, as parents and children, is that the whole school will be learning through the same story each day. If you have multiple children at the school, their learning will be connected, and they can share their story journey together. Learning through Stories becomes especially powerful during remote learning where teachers and friends may seem abstract to children, despite the daily virtual classes. During this period, while we are away from our children, our main goal is to keep connected and support children during this time of uncertainty.
As the Harvard Business Review acknowledges, “Good stories do more than create a sense of connection. They build familiarity and trust, and allow the listener to enter the story where they are, making them more open to learning. Good stories can contain multiple meanings so they’re surprisingly economical in conveying complex ideas in graspable ways.”
Still working within our regular preschool themes & our Rainbow Play framework, our teachers will now base everyday around a particular storybook. This nurturing and inclusive pedagogical approach will provide an opportunity for our little learners to develop empathy and independence despite the distance. Weekly activities include art, music and movement, literacy extension activities, games, story-yoga, dramatic play, sensory play, cookery, scientific exploration, cultural awareness, and outdoor fun. You can look forward to exploring all of these components through your child’s play packs and lesson plans over the next few weeks! Each day, you will get the story video link in the morning – please watch and listen to the story before embarking on the lesson plan activities for the day. Again, remember to pick only a few to keep it manageable and engaging for you and your child. It is very likely that your child will want to watch the story again at the end of the day – this is perfect as young children thrive on repetition; it reinforces and consolidates the learning for the day.
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