Reflection of the AS-LN
My after school experience took place at Lemon Tree Garden. I had many wonderful and insightful experiences as I interacted with the children there. The setting of the school is one that promotes personal, social and emotional development of the children through the everyday activities that are available for children to engage in. moreover, the service there is such that children are able to develop skills that enable them to become increasingly independent.
Through the school’s facilities, children are able to engage in activities that are fun and enjoyable, and which they are interested in. this helps to build their confidence, self-esteem and social skills while at the same time probing their intellect and curiosity.ObservationDuring this particular experience, two children were seated together coloring in their coloring books. There were other children as well but I would like to refer to this two since they were the ones directly involved in the incident. The two children were both young boys aged about six each. The children were coloring a picture of a grocery store.
Meanwhile, I was walking around supervising the children but at the same time, engaging them and assisting them with their activities. The incident that occurred was nothing out of the ordinary, which is precisely why it was striking. One of the boys said to the other that they should color the tomatoes in a much lighter shade of red. Immediately, the other one giggled and retorted, “It’s not tomato (toh’mey’tow), its tomato (toh’mah’tow)”. This resulted in a minor argument between the two on which was the correct pronunciation of the fruit. I felt the urge to intervene, and I did, asking each of them to tell me why they thought that their pronunciation was the correct one. The first boy, who had initially said toh’mey’tow argued that this was the correct pronunciation since one also says poh’tey’tow. The second boy, on the other hand, said that he had heard his parents pronounce the name as toh’mah’tow countless times. I chose not to tell them who was right and who was wrong, instead opting to leave them to sort it out amongst themselves.
Of course, I also knew that being children, they would soon quickly change the topic and forget about that argument.Internal InsightsThe experience was eye-opening to me in that it brought to life some of the arguments normally articulated in the curriculum and syllabus. While I already knew that environment plays an important role in how people learn, I was able to relearn this through a direct experience. Here, both boys had learnt how to pronounce a word through their personal experiences, although one of the pronunciations was by inference. The whole experience made me feel good. It made me realize what I already knew, that learning takes place every day and that children learn through their experiences and interactions. I was enthused and fascinated about the whole experience at the time it was occurring.
This is because this was an argument that normally …
