Modern pedagogical methods in preschool education: "Spontaneous learning" and "Conceptual learning"

Modern pedagogical methods in preschool education Spontaneous learning and Conceptual learning

Contemporary teaching techniques allow children to engage with, comprehend, and apply information more effectively by creating classroom experiences that mirror real-world situations. These methods also help students connect with their societal environment, equipping them to handle diverse challenges and adapt to new circumstances. By offering learners a variety of approaches, they are better prepared to interact with and improve their reality.

The overarching aim of the education process is to foster a school environment that is closely tied to its community. This can be achieved by transforming schools into vibrant, interactive spaces where learning shifts from passive reception to active participation and self-directed learning.

Spontaneous learning:

Spontaneous learning is a method of teaching that is unplanned and unintentional and can happen anytime and anywhere. This type of learning occurs where it is not planned by the educator, and does not follow a specific program, so spontaneous learning occurs. Usually during daily activities, and it is also possible to occur during the performance of another educational activity, which is learning that we do not plan for it mainly to be a goal in presenting the class or activity, it may have a specific goal, but it is not among the goals set within the class and is not much different from normal learning in terms of developing basic skills, and spontaneous learning is important to access information simply, and includes children learning incidental skills and abilities. Learning can be intentional where the educator identifies the cognitive goals and skills to be acquired or incidental where the educator does not have specific learning goals. Examples of incidental learning include a child playing with other children for fun and learning social skills, problem-solving skills, and language use. - A child touches something hot out of curiosity and learns that it hurts to do so.

Spontaneous learning goals:

- It instills a lot of good habits in children.

- It increases the enrichment of the language stock, stimulates memory, and increases the effectiveness of expression.

- Develops many new skills.

- It increases children's motivation to learn and ask questions.

- It aims to develop curiosity in discovering new knowledge.

- Develops the child's personality and promotes personal growth and learning.

- Helping children improve their sensory, perceptual, and cognitive abilities.

- Encourages children to learn new things.

The importance of spontaneous learning:

Spontaneous learning is not limited to time, place or type of learning, we notice that it emerges in the preschool stage, which is considered one of the important stages in the child's life, which develops his desires, inclinations and trends, and helps him to form his habits and skills, and therefore we must encourage the child to learn because the child learns from the school and the environment a set of things to become able to communicate and express his needs and desires in addition to many other experiences spontaneously.

The role of preschool educators in implementing spontaneous learning:

- Providing the right atmosphere for children to learn and not to frustrate the child.

- Always be ready to answer children's questions and satisfy their curiosity.

- Make sure to observe children's reactions and know their motivations.

- Focus on what arouses children's curiosity to take advantage of their high concentration.

Spontaneous learning can be used in several opportunities within the classroom such as:

Religious and national holidays by teaching words that describe the festive event, it is a good way to allow the child to acquire holiday-related vocabulary and generalize it in all possible contexts.

To do this, the educator can simply put some words that are characteristic of the holiday and recognize them, by playing games such as picture-word association, role-playing game or puppet game to reinforce the understanding of any information.

Conclusion:

The spontaneous learning method makes the child acquire new knowledge unintentionally, as it is not planned in the learning situation, but is the result of unintentional learning through daily events or activities.

Conceptual learning:

It is one of the effective ways of learning in preschool education, because it is based on understanding and assimilating concepts more than memorizing them, and it aims to develop the child's perception and awareness, so that concepts help the child to organize information, classify and distinguish elements, shapes, colors, sounds...) Learning to understand and build concepts allows the child to simplify all the elements that develop his knowledge and skills, as the preschool stage for the child is important in assimilating and acquiring concepts.

When children internalize a concept, they do four things:

- Knowledge: They mention adjectives for the concept, such as “bird” has wings and feathers.

- Generalization: They provide examples of the concept, e.g. “bird” is a bird, “stork” is a stork

- Discrimination: Selects examples that belong to the concept and excludes those that don't.

- Problem solving: A child who recognizes the concept of “ball” can recognize that it must be placed on a flat surface so that it does not roll.

Conceptual learning goals:

- To help the child learn concepts and master strategies for acquiring them.

- Increase the degree of knowledge growth and diversity in the child's future, i.e., the more information the child passes through the mind, the more the child's understanding increases.

- Stimulate the learning of concepts and the process of developing mental growth, the development of the child's thinking skills.

- Facilitate the understanding of scientific activities and their components.

- Increase children's motivation and cognitive achievement: The child becomes more productive and contributes to the production of knowledge.

- Linking previous knowledge to new knowledge and utilizing the experiences that have been learned by the child.

- Improve children's learning abilities.

- Cross-conceptual learning helps young learners discover conceptual relationships in a way that matches their developmental level.

- Facilitate understanding and learning quickly and stay longer in memory.

- Helps children face issues and find solutions to them.

The role of preschool educators in implementing conceptual learning:

- Directing children towards learning situations for discussion in order to build concepts.

- The educator should take into account the logical and psychological sequence of children in teaching and learning concepts.

- Ensure that children understand the previous concepts needed to learn new concepts.

- Give children positive attention and make them feel that their words and concepts are important.

- Provide an environment where children feel free to think and express their concepts.

- Encourage children to participate in the construction of concepts.

- Make sure to teach children concepts that facilitate their communication with others.

An example of an activity that can be done with children to facilitate their acquisition of concepts “Categorization Games”:

Prepare a set of small boxes, each box represents a specific category that can be used a picture or drawing that expresses it, glued to the box, in addition to a set of cards belonging to the categories displayed on the boxes, for example, animals, clothes, household items. .......

The educator helps children to recognize and describe the pictures, for example, a picture of a sheep is described, named and then try to categorize the picture according to the category it belongs to.

Children can be allowed to suggest other things that can be added to the categories.

This activity should be done several times and the categories can be changed according to the projects studied.

Sorting Games by Characteristics Size, Color, Old New.... Encourage children to name things that have similar characteristics.

Conclusion:

The first years of a child's life constitute a large part of the formation of his personality and his realization of many concepts that develop his knowledge, and each child remains a special way in which he is comfortable and inclined during learning, so the educator must respect the characteristics of each child in learning.