Early Childhood Education Develops Creativity in Learners

Early childhood education plays an important role in supporting children’s ability in art, dramatic expression and creative responses to different problems. Creativity enhances a young child’s desire to learn and supports intellectual development. In order to enhance creativity of children, few things are needed to be kept in mind:-
-    One important way a child learns about his/her true self is through this direct interaction with you
-    Always maintain positivity while responding to a child’s work and ideas
-    Focus should be given on the uniqueness of each child and encourage to nurture her trust and creativity
-    Organize group meetings where children can freely express themselves in different areas

Now let us explore different ways of jump-starting children’s creativity in different curriculum areas:-
Use of art: Finger painting, drawing, and clay work- are few activities that promote creativity and are adopted in many early childhood classrooms. Adequate observation and monitoring of these activities will reveal creative discoveries. During this time, the preschool teacher will appreciate the child’s discovery like layering more and more colour changes the density of the colour. Your sensitivity towards the child’s discovery will increase his confidence and passionate commitment required for creativity.
Read More: Early Childhood Teachers Teach Young Learners the Basic Skills
Dance and Movements: Some kids need to be involved in active movement a lot of time. It will be wise for the teacher to encourage them in dance and movements as much as possible like dividing the students in two groups. One group will make music by singing and associated with clapping their hands, tapping their feet on the floor, playing rhythm instruments. The other group will dance to the music in their own innovative ways, free style.
Herein children learn to represent things by use of their bodies. They can use this movement to express their various emotions - joy, anger and surprise etc. They can act like butterfly, bunny or an elephant.
These ways of creative thinking helps them to grow in their overall personality. It’s growth of both body and mind.
Imagination Games:  Imagination games help them to fancy things, retrieve information from their memory, compare and contrast ideas, and make connection to every bit of information. Like asking a child to pretend to act like an animal of their choice - now teacher observes which animal they choose and how they act upon behaving like that animal throughout the day. In the due process they learn about themselves, their capabilities and preferences and reactions.
Read More: Design Games to Teach Grammar to Young Learners
Classroom get-togethers:  Create a form of summer picnic in the classroom. Start by spreading a large sheet on the floor; put some seashells across and small tubs full of sand or water. And engage each one in making sandwiches and various slices of fruit mix. All this unleashes their creativity in organising an event of fun and entertainment for a large group.
Read poetry: Reading poetry to them develops their language and their understanding of what coming next. This leads to brain development which is vital at this stage of growth.
Thus relationship between the preschool teachers and children, how classroom time and space are organised and available resource materials are important factors in the development of the creativity of the children. It is prime responsibility of the teacher to unearth resources to satisfy children’s creative thrust to know and develop in the due process. Classroom thus is the place where creativity is likely to blossom and grow. Early childhood care and education is the foundation phase for any kid’s development process. During this phase instead of pushing them across the edge with intensive studies, involving them in various creative activities are immensely useful.

Phonetics is an Important Part of Language Learning

Phonetics plays an important role in speaking English as a second language. It is an indispensable component of English language. Teaching phonetics to Indian students is too difficult because various dialect problems are bound to arise. And many of these students think that there is no constructive usage of learning pronunciation. They know that all languages are spoken first and written second. If they could speak English with local people, whatever the pronunciation may be, it is not observable but while communicating with foreigners, the speakers must articulate standard pronunciation. But this is a wrong notion. As pronunciation is not an optional for the language learner, rather it is an integral part of language like any other aspect like grammar, vocabulary etc. It is necessary because the spelling of an English word does clearly state how we should pronounce it.

Few techniques and activities can be practised for useful results for learners and teachers:
1.    Reading aloud: - The learners should read aloud the paragraphs or text to improve good pronunciation. The teacher’s responsibility is to identify the errors and mistakes in pronunciation made by the learner and give them quality feedback to improve their skills of communication. The classroom techniques and activities for teaching EFL pronunciation make the learner add on their talent for bettering their pronunciation.

Read More : Motivating Students and Staff is Part of Education Management

2.    Conversational Activities: - The teachers are responsible for designing communicative tasks so that he/she can indirectly improve the learner’s pronunciation and speaking skills. Mini-conversations or dialogues for both young and adult learners in an EFL classroom will practice particular sounds, especially those which are not there in their mother tongue. Such activities could be participating in plays, debates, discussions, rehearsals will help them to improve on their pronunciation and they gain confidence in due process.

3.    Dictionary Practice: - An authentic dictionary provides the meaning and the phonetic transcription. It helps the learners to develop on the syllable division and stress mark. They could easily find the right pronunciation and correct themselves. It is thus helpful to take note from the dictionary which provides both grammar and vocabulary.

4.    Repeating sounds: - Pronunciation by using and repeating the sounds, one can easily learn the correct articulation. Thus the learners must practice word frequently; they can easily remember its pronunciation and phonetic transcription.

5.    Computer-assisted language learning: - CALL plays a significant role in learning phonetics. They can find out their mistakes through using computer. The learners get various benefits out of it. They will be monitored, guided and given full freedom. Teachers can make use of the visual displays of speech pattern to teach intonation, stress and phonemes to learners. This tool is useful for all categories of learners.

Read More: Computers in Classrooms Benefit Students' Learning

6.    Self-help: - When the learners practice the phonetics and pay attention to it, the improvement will be in their articulation. Self –monitoring is also the important action in terms of self correction and fixing one’s inaccuracy after they have repeated the word or phrase correctly. The teachers must teach the learners to self monitor, and give their feedback regarding the same.

Thus we can conclude that phonetics being the indispensable component in English language is a compulsory constituent in speaking a second language. The activities and techniques suggested above will bring high-quality articulations. Phonetics courses as integral part of teacher training courses must be pursued to deliver adequately or learn the techniques to involve students of different age groups the proficiency and accuracy to speak English in a correct way and manner.