6-year-old Cai Er is one of many left-behind children in her village. Her parents work in Guangdong and only come back once a year for the Spring Festival. She lives with her grandparents in Tiandong County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Cai Er, a kindergarten student, is the tallest in her class but very shy and a bit afraid of meeting strangers and showing herself.
Her kindergarten was just founded last year. The principal hopes children in the village will enjoy learning, but the kindergarten faces a shortage in teachers with education background of early childhood education. To help, World Vision invited an expert from Hong Kong to carry out training on picture book teaching for kindergarten teachers in Tiandong County, and donated a batch of picture books as well. Ca Er’s teachers have never received specific teaching training before. Ms. Lan, a kindergarten teacher, said, “I have learned that picture book teaching is not only telling children stories, but also teaching children knowledge and developing their habits.”
The kindergarten launched a “Reading Promotion Month” activity after the training. Teachers will regularly bring children to the reading room and read picture books for them every month. They also applied what they have learned in the training to daily teaching. Ms. Lan said, “The children like my way of storytelling very much. I read picture books for them using skills learned from the training. I ask them questions in the way the trainer taught us, so children can develop their language abilities. They also like to read picture books in the reading room. They often ask me if they could go to “be quiet”. They call the reading room “be quiet”, because I always ask them to be quiet in the reading room.”
The kindergarten also held drama performances in conjunction with the picture book reading activity. Children were asked to act the characters in the picture books, so that they could better understand and remember the stories. Cai Er’s class acted the story of “Greenfly”. The teacher asked Cai Er to act the character of “the king of greenfly”, but she was not willing to do it at first. Then the teacher read the story of “Greenfly” for her. After several times’ listening, she got more and more interested in the story. One day, she came to the teacher and said, “I want to act “the king of greenfly. It’s very funny.”
Many parents were invited to watch the drama performance. But instead of being nervous, Cai Er put on a great performance. Ms. Lan said, “She has become more and more confident and active since the performance. Look! She is playing with her classmate, which she was scared to do so before. Her parents have my phone number and they often ask me how she is doing. Cai Er’s progress makes them feel relieved.”
The kindergarten plans to continue the “Reading Promotion Month” activity and carry out a story telling competition for children. “They will learn more by telling the stories on their own.” Ms. Lan said. The kindergarten also encourages parents to participate in the “Reading Promotion Month”. It supports parents to borrow picture books and read with their children at home. The picture book teaching approach has improved rural kindergarten teachers’ teaching methods and enabled rural kindergartens to keep up with modern early childhood education development.”
