Family and community engagement are essential to promote high quality services for all children in ECE settings. Parents know their children better than anyone in terms of temperaments, strength, vulnerabilities, talents and special needs. As such, early childhood providers should create authentic partnership with parents to share their expertise, culture and care.
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| Family and Community Engagement Framework - Group 3 |
Our task is to create our own Family and Community Engagement (F&C) Framework by identify the important elements. Then, the group need to critically discuss the important of F&C engagement in child development. After that, devise constructive strategies to encourage F&C engagement in EC settings.
The above is the mapping of the framework we created after discussion.
The aim of the framework is to provide an environment that encourage quality interaction with family, society, peers, professionals and nature.
- Teachers can prepare some take-home projects to be completed together by the parents and child
- Parents are invited to join the teaching and learning process in the classroom
- Parents can take turns to prepare teaching materials to better understand the learning subject/theme
- Teachers and parents can work together in school beautification projects
- Ongoing research shows that parental involvement in school improves students' achievement in academic, social skills and behaviors.
ii) Society collaboration
- visitations to old folks home and orphanage can let the children see the other side of the community which are less fortunate to cultivate them to be more compassionate, kind and willing to offer helping hands to others
- children can learn the culture and experience the real setting of different ethnic and religion by visitations to friends' open house especially during festive season. Diversity need to be acknowledged and valued. Mutual respect is very important to extract the best of our cultural diversity.
iii) Peer teamwork
- children need to expose to activities that encourage teamwork with peers such as Sports Day, Canteen Day, Exhibitions etc. Ability to work as a team is an essential life skill because it involved a significant amount of interaction.
iv) Partnership with professionals (rescue team, health department, police force)
- for the sake of children safety, they need to know where and how to get help when in need. The ECE providers can invite the professionals to school or visit to their premises to let the children understand their job nature and provide correct information and guidance to children.
v) Nature
- this is an important elements but always neglected - interaction with nature from leafy forest to home grown flowers. Besides human and technology, children need to learn to appreciate the nature and thus build the connection with nature for its sustainability. There are numerous empirical research evidenced that interacting with nature delivers a range of benefits to children physically, psychologically and cognitive performance.
Children nowadays are digital native and collaboration is very important in early childhood. As such, when designing the framework we should also link all the above elements with Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to promote the development of creativity and children's ICT capability. Their critical thinking skills must be encouraged through out the communication process.
This is the last blog of year 2019. Goodbye 2019!! Welcome 2020!!!
HAPPY NEW YEAR to dear Dr Kim and fellow course mates!!!
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