Characteristics of Children’s Learning Materials
Language which the children acquire is language the children can easily use in spontaneous conversation
4 Variety in the classroom
Varieties in the classroom are necessary, for example, varieties of activities, varieties of organizations, and varieties of choices.
5 Routines
Children benefit from knowing the rules and being familiar with the situation. The materials should have systems and routines. The teachers should
organize and plan their lessons through familiar situations and familiar activities. This can be done, for example, by repeating stories and rhymes.
6 Cooperation not competition
The materials should avoid rewards and prizes. Other forms of encouragement are much more effective by making room for shared experiences.
They are an invaluable source of language work and create an atmosphere of involvement and togetherness. Most of children enjoy the feeling of belonging
and this is particularly true of young children. 7
Grammar Children have an amazing ability to absorb language through play and other
activities which they find enjoyable. How good they are in a foreign language is not dependent on whether they have learnt the grammar rules or not.
8 Assessment
Even though formal assessment may not be a compulsory part of the teacher’s work, it is always useful for the teacher to make regular notes about each
child’s progress. The teacher may want to tell parents how their children are doing, and the teacher should be talking to the children regularly about their work
and encouraging self-assessment. From the beginning this can be done in very simple terms, stressing the positive side of things and playing down what the pupil
has not been able to master. Nothing succeeds like success. Brewster and Ellis 2002: 244 state that assessment at primary level can be
described as an attempt to analyze the learning that a child has achieved over a period of time as a result of the classroom teaching learning situation. Assessment
does not need to be based on a particular task nor is it always expressed as a percentage or mark. It may include a teacher’s subjective opinion of the
achievement of a child in term of attitude, participation and cognitive development. Assessment is also assessed ‘relatively’ in that the progress of an
individual child can be measured against his or her individual starting points and abilities, instead of being compared with skills and abilities of other children.
Based on the theories above, assessment for kindergarten children focuses more on the process of teaching learning. It is done through children’
performance, interaction, listening comprehension: giving verbal and non-verbal responses, frequency of children’ responses, and children’ affective factors:
anxiety and motivation Brown 2004: 207. Children learn directly and directly. When teachers are controlling activity
fairly closely, children sometimes seem to notice something out of the corner of their eyes and to remember it better than what they were actually supposed
through interesting and suitable learning tasks which encourage them to get
information from variety sources. The activities should be flexible enough to move on the next activities when children are getting bored.