Teaching Young Children
(or the difference between could and should)

FRAN COMBS GAMBOA meditates on how young children learn best, and considers how they should best be taught.

Well,” said my friend Lupita as she described her husband’s plan to return to work after leaving the hospital following major surgery, “Marco says he could be back at his office by Thursday.”

“Could and should are not synonymous,” I replied flippantly as I considered just how stubborn the male gender can sometimes be.

Later, I began thinking about the difference between could and should. As an adult I could choose any diet I wish, but should I constantly fill up on salty, fatty fast food? I could choose to sit in my office all day and on my couch all evening watching TV and never walk or exercise, but should I, given what I know about the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle?

Having the ability to do something does not make it the optimum choice. Just as we need to use informed decision-making to select a healthy lifestyle, so, as educators, do we need to look at what research tells us about how children learn best before deciding on the materials and activities to use in our classrooms.

With the increased interest in the United States on academic standards and accountability, both very laudable concepts, there is a real risk of falling into the trap of pushing only the sit and get curriculum and of considering as frills anything that will not be measured on a test. When we look at second language learning in young children, the difference between what they could and should be doing is drastic.

We know that children as young as one and a half to two years old can be taught to read. They can learn to do rather complex math procedures and other concepts by memory and sit for long periods at small tables working in books or with paper and pencil. But, the question is, are these activities the best use of their time? Or are there other ways that children can be taught effectively? Most literature about teaching young children uses the term developmentally appropriate practice to describe methodology which is congruent with research on teaching and learning as well as the new finds from current brain research. It behoves us to use this knowledge and experience to design good, solid, and fun curricula for our students—curricula which will enable them not just to learn, but to become eager, competent, inquiring lifelong learners.

So, what is it that young children should be experiencing as they learn?

• First of all, children learn best in an atmosphere free from tension and fear. In relation to the affective filter and language learning, Stephen Krashen states that the classroom must be a place where positive re-enforcement and encouragement of risk-taking are actively practiced.
• Next, children need to find elements of interest in what they are learning: the higher the interest, the more involvement on the student’s part; the more involvement, the more the student will learn.
• Finally, young children need to participate in the learning process using as many of their senses as possible. We often hear the term hands-on as something quite new, but we know that creative teachers have always focused on body parts to provide their students with the experiences they need.

Does this mean that workbooks and papers have no place in the classroom for young children? Not necessarily. But any product, no matter how good, is limited by the use that the teacher makes of it. In language learning, workbooks are the springboard for each concept being taught. These concepts need to be re-enforced by many language extension activities that will allow the students to encounter the concept again and again in a natural, rich context. When looking for these language extension activities, we need to focus on those that will provide high interest, use of several senses, lots of body movement, and opportunities for using the language without risk. Following are several examples.

Music: Children love music and rhythm. Singing songs in the target language is a fun and effective way for teachers to get all children to practice using the language in a non-threatening situation. Action songs help by adding meaning to the words, such as pointing upward when singing the word up. Music also helps train the ear for auditory discrimination, a necessary element for good reading skills.

Cooking: Doing simple cooking activities in the classroom is another way to extend and practice language concepts. Words like chopping, stirring, pouring, and mixing are not easily used in the regular classroom but within the context of a cooking activity as part of the natural language. Other concepts such as sequencing, measuring, and watching liquids turn to solids can also be emphasized.

Games: There are whole class games that provide opportunities for students to show understanding of language without the need to show production. Working with a board or card game in small groups is also fun and very effective for practicing patterns and learning new vocabulary. Concentration, Go Fish, and Monopoly are fun and easy to make to fit special themes. A good source for other ideas is 20 Reading Games to Make for the Elementary Classroom by Dr. Caroline Linse (Scholastic).

TPR activities: James Asher, in his Total Physical Response, tapped into a truth about learning that when parents play baby games such as pat-a-cake and an action is associated with a word, the word is soon learned. So, when children jump up and down while responding to the word jump, or draw a red bird at the top of the page or peel a lemon and smell it, language is fixed more firmly into the receptive centers of the brain.

Drama and theater: Being able to retell a story is an important ability for children to show their understanding of sequence, cause and effect, and basic vocabulary. Using puppets, acting out a story, or rewriting the ending are other ways for students to show these same understandings. By making costumes and props, painting scenery, writing scripts, or creating puppets, a teacher provides students with many venues for using language skills while also meeting children’s needs for high-interest and multisensory activities.

Good stories and literature: All children love to hear a good story. Books with large, simple, colorful illustrations and repetitive language are best. We can give meaning to the words by changing our voice from character to character. We can also write big books with our students to build our classroom library.

Field trips and resource people: To build background knowledge for understanding written and oral language, we should encourage field trips to visit a factory, a museum, or the planetarium. Bringing in speakers with artifacts, slides, or books on a subject is another way to stimulate interest and provide the new concepts and vocabulary in a more comprehensible context.

These are but a few possibilities to consider. Next time a parent tells you, “My child could be taking dictation,” say, “I’m sure she could. But is that really what she should be doing?”

Fran Combs Gamboa, Ed.M Harvard University, is the principal of the Early Childhood Center of The American School Foundation in Mexico City, Mexico. She is co-author with Rebecca Williams Salvador of Kinder Steps, a series for teaching English to young children (Richmond Publishing, 1997). She recently worked on a project with the Ministry of Education of Panama to design a program for universal English teaching for public school students at pre-K to 12th grade.