How to Know Each Child in a Preschool Classroom

Hi, my name is Tressa Giordano, oh, I’m an Early Educator and Co-creator of The SEEDS Network. Hi! Today were going to talk about the importance of getting to know children individually in order to create a better learning environment. For teachers to adequately be able to teach their preschoolers, it really is important that you get to know them personally. You want to get to know what makes them unique, what their likes are, so you can really bring teaching right to them. Some of the things that our teachers will do at the beginning of the school year, or if a child enters the classroom mid-year, is to have their parents fill out an All About Me Form. This is a great way to start to get to know your students. It lists things like their favorite toys, responsibilities at home, um, if they have siblings, things that they have at meal times. Just gives them a lot of great information for the teachers to start getting to know their kids before they come into their class. Another item that we’ll use in the classroom, for the children to be able to share about themselves, with their teachers and classmates, is a nice poster that the children can complete at home. And, on this poster the child can put things like their age, what they want to be when they grow up, um, things like colors, their favorite book, their favorite holiday, and it’s really fun to see that the children have a lot of input on what these likes are. And here at the bottom you can see where they drew their family in. So, just again another great way to really get to know your students in class. A third way that our teachers like to get to know our students, is to have a classroom book together. This one was about a Reading Road Trip and different places that the students in class would like to go, and why they would like to go there. So, as you can see some of the students, “I would like to go to Boston.” Here’s another one who wants to go to Boston. “I would like to travel to Florida.” So, just a really fun way to get those conversations going in class, to learn the different likes and dislikes of your students. By doing this your able to get to know your students better, and when its time to teach things, academics, like writing, or um, reading, maybe letter recognition you can take their interests and likes, and incorporate right into the learning and be a more effective educator.