The Learning Curve……
What a joy to teach Kindergarten!
Kindergarteners are devoted, young learners brimming with observations about every single thing around them. They take every Math concept, Read-Aloud, Science experiment, and Phonics lesson taught in class with curiosity and innocence.
For many children, this is their first year at school. Their unfamiliarity with school routines, literal interpretation of the world, and dependence on adults can make online teaching of kindergarten a daunting task. But as educators, we have tried to adapt, upgrade and curate, practical online teaching resources to give the best to our children.
Making YouTube videos for our kindergarteners was a similar experience. It was a bit ‘trying’ but an amazing one too! We are grateful to our ‘techie spouses’ 🙂 who helped us navigate through this learning process!
Having a dedicated channel was important for children to get familiar with the teachers and also for teachers to communicate with children through various mediums – like music, dance, role play, and enacting of stories. We created a shared catalog to document the videos under different categories. Reference numbers were auto-generated using the category, teachers’ initials, and serial numbers. The online catalog became a common resource for anyone at school to access.
We made sure that all videos had a similar cover page and school branding. All videos followed a standard format keeping in view the age group of the audience.
PROCESS OF MAKING VIDEOS
Initially, we struggled with the quality of audio and video till we realized that both could be done separately in conducive environments. For story narration, enacting, and dance, audios were recorded first, followed by the videos in multiple sessions. This ensured that we could record audios in a soundproof indoor setting and shoot the videos anywhere else, like the school turf or the basketball court, or the Amphitheatre. Finally, everything could be edited and assembled together.
YouTube videos were marked as ‘Unlisted’ so that only people with the link had access to them. We learned that we could make any video private and remove the public access completely if needed.
We are proud to say that today, Jr Kindergarten at Vidya Valley School has a dedicated YouTube / SoundCloud channel with over 80 audio/video projects. We achieved all this with Teamwork, dedication, and a willingness to adapt. We had the full support and encouragement from Principal ma’am and our school.
“Change can be beautiful if we are brave enough to evolve with it, and change can be brutal when we fearfully resist.”- Bryant McGill
