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When the pandemic hit a year ago, early childhood education centers faced a huge challenge in educating children in India. Podar Jumbo Kids Platinum in Mumbai, a New Nordic Partner school, looked at the situation as an opportunity to learn and grow as a team of parents, teachers and children with the thought that “Learning should never stop.”
The solution
Podar Jumbo Kids Platinum team implemented the New Nordic School education system online. New Nordic School’s early years offering consists of the Nordic Baccalaureate Exploration curriculum, global pedagogy and the Kindiedays Pedagogical Management solution. The three components helped the team to make a smooth shift from physical school to virtual school.
The Nordic Baccalaureate Exploration curriculum enables teachers to design activities with resources available at home that will help children learn. The teachers emphasized on interaction, motivation and mainly on providing choices to children in the process of making them independent. The curriculum provided flexibility and agility for the teachers with the primary objective that learning should be fun.
In this virtual implementation, Kindiedays platform helped teachers to document their learning by collecting picture evidence from parents and for parents to understand the development progress of their child.
Podar Jumbo Kids Platinum realized that new ways of working are required
We asked ourselves “Why should learning stop?”. And saw the value of what we have, and decided to get the most of it. Rather than having nothing, we can do so much and let the children get the opportunity to continue learning.
The opportunity in crisis is learning & growing together as parents, children, teachers and friends. Then virtual sessions and new technology was the solution to keep us growing.
Motivating and engaging parents is increasingly important
Communication is the key. We along with parents & students work as a team. Hence we motivate the parents to incorporate activities in daily routines. We ensure them to be there helping whenever they face difficulties.
Existing parents to a great extent have accepted the new approach to the curriculum and digital solution. They have realised the importance of learning in child's growth and value the service we offer in the current situation.
We have been taking updates in parent-teacher meetings, running daily online sessions, giving ideas to conduct different activities thereby making learning journey fun. Messaging and sharing activities has been possible with the help of Kindiedays.
Be innovative with the children
Design various fun-filled activities with materials available at home. Make concept time much fun. Interact & motivate each other. Celebrate events and so on. Most importantly give the child his choice to be innovative and feel comfortable in the new situation.
Continue following the curriculum and the learning process
Even if new working methods, lesson plans and technology are used, the curriculum and learning objectives stay.
“Mapping the curriculum objectives to the activities children do at home helped us to understand children’s level in their learning journey,” says Headmistress Maitry Mehta at Podar Jumbo Kids Platinum preschool in Mumbai.
Evidence of learning in the form of pictures and notes from the parents has been collected with Kindiedays and mapped to the learning objectives of the curriculum. This resembles the way we normally work in-class. From this the child’s learning journey is made visible in the form of child’s portfolio and learning reports.
What learnings came out from the crisis?
The learning process should not be disrupted, and children must continue learning in line with the curriculum objectives. At the same time social interaction should be encouraged also online. The children should feel that the teacher is coming to meet them. Sessions should be enriched with e.g. storytelling, visualizing and individualizing education.
Acceptance is the key to make you optimistic and work better as a team. Keep explaining parents and children how it is not safe to conduct physical school. Be clear and transparent about the new situation and working methods. Pay attention to the time needed for the changes from the child’s perspective. Create a clear structure for learning. Be innovative, keep parents and children on board and continue to follow the curriculum.
Podar Jumbo Kids Platinum now has a modern educational system and technology that can be flexibly adapted to distance and in-class learning as the situation evolves.
Learn more about how Kindiedays Blended Learning flexibly combines in-class and distance learning.
