Mixed-age education is an organizational form in which children of different ages are mixed in a class to carry out activities, which is beneficial to make up for the shortage of family life of only children, because it can provide children with a family-like living and learning environment and have more opportunities to interact with children of different ages, so as to learn social behaviors such as caring, sharing and cooperation, lay the foundation for forming a positive and healthy personality, and at the same time promote the development of children's socialization and cultivate a small social person.
Advantages of mixed-age classes
1. Provide a communication environment for children of different ages.
Early childhood is a critical period for children's social development. The mixed-age education model provides an environment for children to communicate with peers of different ages. Older children fully display themselves, but also give love and know how to take care of others. These are not easy for only children to learn in their families.
2. Strengthen the cultivation of the only child's emotion.
Only children often have personality problems such as willfulness, selfishness and poor independence. The activities of mixed-age classes create an opportunity for the only child to be together like brothers and sisters. It makes up for the defect that the only child lacks the communication environment of children of different ages, and effectively inhibits the generation of bad characteristics such as selfishness, willfulness, strong dependence, poor independence and low communication ability.
3. Effectively promote children's language development.
It is very important to cultivate children's ability to understand and express language, as well as good listening and speaking habits and interest in language communication. In the warm mixed-age class, every child is a member of this big family. In a free, relaxed and casual atmosphere, these children show more clearly that they want to talk, are willing to talk, dare to talk and like to feel the joy of talking together. In this period, if effective mixed-age education is carried out, if older children have strong oral expression ability and large vocabulary, which can influence younger children and promote each other, it will really play an important role in children's language development.
4. Effectively promote the development of children's thinking.
Children of mixed-age education, due to the age difference, in various educational activities, children with low ability can always learn and construct their own knowledge structure by observing and imitating older children with strong ability. The direct communication of mixed-age children is of great significance to the development of their intelligence and thinking ability.
Disadvantages of mixed-age classes
1, which requires a lot of teachers.
Teachers should master the different levels of each child's development, accurately and appropriately divide the children into several groups, and then teach according to their characteristics: sometimes they should be grouped according to their age or ability, and sometimes they need to put forward different requirements for the same content. This operation is very difficult, and it is difficult for ordinary teachers to be competent.
2. learning progress.
Some educational activities only need one unit time in the same age class, but it takes several units time to complete in the mixed age class. If the organization is not good, it will also cause some children to do nothing.
The older children are so strong.
Paying attention to the performance of older children will affect the development of younger children and their self-confidence. On the contrary, teachers tend to pay more attention to younger children, but lower the requirements for older children, which affects the development of older children to some extent.
How to attend classes in mixed-age classes
1, pay attention to target positioning.
The curriculum of kindergarten mixed-age classes should consider the following two objectives: first, the educational objectives for children, such as intelligence, interest, ability, quality, emotion and other guidance and educational objectives related to children's development; Second, aiming at the influence of curriculum content on children's educational goals, help children develop their potential in all aspects. In view of the above goals, when setting goals in the course, we should not be empty and big.
2. The choice of content should be considered.
The content of children's mixed-age class must come from children's real life, but in view of the mixed-age situation, we have added a thinking procedure when choosing the activity content: carefully analyze the activity content and find a suitable starting point for children of all ages. This requires teachers in mixed-age classes not only to analyze the concerns and interests of children of each age group, but also to analyze which knowledge points in the activity content are suitable for older children and which younger children are willing to accept; This activity can promote the development of older children's ability and exercise children's ability at the same time.
3. Consider the ability difference of children's age.
Children of different ages must have different interests and ways of thinking about the upcoming activities. In order to take into account the differences, the mixed-age curriculum must flexibly adopt various organizational forms, such as mixed-age, divided-age and individual, and effectively arrange the interaction of children of different ages in group activities, group activities, life activities and game activities. When children of all ages are interested in a certain content without too much direct operation, teachers can consider taking the form of mixed-age group activities when the learning content can be thought independently.
4. The law of children's physical and mental health development should be considered.
Children's habits have become the top priority of early childhood education in this era. Therefore, we decided to let the children "feel the truth, goodness and beauty in every activity and every link of life in the park, develop good behavior norms, and thus gain the desire to learn". Such educational goals may be broad and massive, but with such curriculum goals, it puts forward mutual educational significance for the individual and group development of teachers and children.
5. Other requirements that should be paid attention to.
"Maximizing the interaction between different ages" is the essence of mixed-age curriculum. In many ways, older children can play the role of "little teachers", which can not only let younger children develop their intelligence and language in a happy state, but also consolidate their existing knowledge and exercise their various abilities in activities.