Full-time education goes beyond the idea of keeping the student for more hours inside the school. It needs to promote socialization, integration and stimulate learning in the school environment.
Therefore, teachers and managers need to learn how to develop new activities in the early childhood education school and meet the needs of each age group. There are many challenges in this process, but they can be overcome with dedication and willingness to do more. How about understanding the concept better and knowing some strategies that can be implemented? Keep up with it!
Full-time education concept
According to the portal, integral education aims to promote the development of the student as a whole. This includes the following aspects: physical, intellectual, social and psychological.
Thus, this model aims to develop the child in a broad way. It values the recognition of aesthetics, improvement of artistic and musical skills and identification of aspects that do good for the body.
Full-time education recognizes that learning is done in a continuous way and involves all the events of daily life. In this sense, it covers both the work of education and the care and attention to children.
Features
This educational methodology began to be implemented in many schools after the changes in the country’s education policies. The National Education Plan (PNE), for example, instituted a progressive increase in the schools’ journey. The intention is to encourage students to stay at least seven hours in the educational environment.
However, it is necessary to understand that it is not enough just to increase the length of time they stay in school. It is fundamental to invest in activities that increase the development of students.
Therefore, full-time education demands an investment in structural and cultural changes of educators and managers. It is necessary to evaluate the school curriculum and identify existing educational resources. It is important to expand the offers of practices related to the motor development of students, as well as learning about culture, music and expression.
Strategies for implementing full-time education at school
In order to implement full-time education, the kindergarten needs to manage its physical spaces and its professionals well. It is fundamental to invest more time in pedagogical planning in order to take better advantage of the period in which the student is in the educational environment.
In this sense, the manager needs to work in partnership with the teachers to promote education in a transversal way, connecting subjects worked in class with real situations.
Adequate infrastructure
When presenting the full education proposal to the parents, the manager must be prepared to organize the classes in class. After all, some may be interested in keeping their child in the classroom all day long, while others may prefer that the student stay only part time.
Therefore, it is necessary that the school has an adequate infrastructure to have classrooms available for full-time and part-time students, for example. The manager should also consider the availability of spaces to offer playful activities such as dance, music and story reading.
Activities
Teachers and managers need to prepare specific activities to work with the children who remain full-time in school. After all, they are not in the environment just to “occupy the time”. Students need to learn and develop new skills during this time. Check out some suggestions:
- Use technology to educate;
- create fitting games to develop motor skills and reasoning;
- encourage oral hygiene;
- promote ball games among students to stimulate social integration;
- encourage the development of speech with playful activities;
- reading stories to broaden vocabulary and develop children’s imaginary;
- promote musical works for the child to develop rhythm and motor coordination;
- seek partnerships to enable environmental education activities and basic day-to-day care (such as not messing with fire and not entering the pool alone, for example);
- Do theatrical activities to develop imagination and communication;
- create a sensory garden for children to identify objects and shapes, etc.
Community Involvement
Another important strategy to adopt full education at school is to seek the participation of family members and the community. This is how the manager can get to know the reality of the students and their difficulties, besides identifying new approaches that can be worked on at school.
In addition, parents can be invited to meetings and activities at school so they can better understand the universe of children, the projects developed in class and the objectives of each proposal.
This is a way to integrate the family with the school environment, promote a closer relationship between parents and children and improve the quality of education.
Risks and opportunities of this type of education
Full-time education can be an opportunity for the school, which can improve its cash flow, and also for students, who can learn more. It can also promote better use of space, without greatly increasing the costs of maintaining activities. However, if teachers and managers are not prepared for this change, it can become a major problem and generate dissatisfaction among parents.
Therefore, it is recommended that management invest in specific courses so that teachers can prepare themselves for this educational model. In these meetings with other educators, they will be able to discover new teaching strategies and games that can be applied in the classroom. Managers should also participate in courses and lectures on the subject so that they can have ideas for the early childhood education school.