May 5, 2025 • 16 mins
Whenever you gather children for a large group experience, consider focusing the lesson moral development. In this episode, Cindy and Alison discuss what is included in moral development and how we can focus on that during class meetings, read-alouds, and more.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to How Preschool Teachers Do It.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
This is Alison Kenso's I am an early childhood educator.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
And this is Cindy tarror Bush. I am an early
childhood consultant.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
This podcast is for parents and early childhood professionals.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Let our experience and research based knowledge become your guide.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Hi preschool peeps, Hi pee. We really hope you enjoyed
our last episode, which was so much fun. It was
so much fun. Today a little more serious, but not
like sad serious. Yeah, not worship, not the big, big serious.
So welcome back. We hope that you've gone to YouTube
and checked out the QR code that is now in
(00:44):
our background on the screen and held your camera up
to it and then tapped on the website it names
and check that out. Just what that's all we're going
to say about it at this point, So please go
check that out. And also we want to thank people
who are listening from around the world in the country.
Go ahead, Romania, so hello everyone in Romania. Hello, and
(01:07):
Omaha Nebraska. So you people in Romania and Omaha, Nebraska
who are listening, we thank you and we want you
to spread the word. Yes, now the onus is on
you and speaking of a good onus, speaking of like
a hot topic and a good onness. We're here to
(01:28):
talk about something. You know, we've talked about large group
in the past, we're here talking about honestly, we're being honest.
We've talked about large group, but I don't think we've
talked about it in this way. And so we wanted
to bring something to your attention that actually one of
my college students brought to the attention of the class
and I loved it, and I said, I'm gonna, you know,
(01:49):
I really want to talk about this on the podcast. Uh,
and that's what should we be focusing our large group on.
And this student said something that I thought was really interesting,
the way that she looks at large group. So when
we're talking about large group, we're talking about what you
may call circle time, morning meeting, end of day, large group, right,
whatever you call your large group end of day meeting,
(02:11):
which you should be having. But also large groups can
be read alouds when you've gathered a large group to
go outside and you're all walking together, when you are
kind of all just kind of eating.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Yeah, that's a large gather activity.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
So I want you to think about not only the
morning meeting, but all your others, particularly when you're reading
to children, because I don't know that we always focus
this way. And what my student was talking about was
the fact that she believes that these large group gatherings
of young children should be always focused on moral development.
(02:49):
So I'm gonna read to you what AI says about
moral development because I thought it was actually a really
good definition. Yeah, artificial intelligence isn't always really great, but
in this case, I thought it was when they were Yeah, okay. So,
according to the AI bots, moral development refers to the
process by which individuals learn to distinguish between right and wrong,
(03:12):
developing the ability to make ethical decisions based on their
understanding of societal values and norms, and is important because
it allows people to contribute positively to society by acting
with empathy, fairness, and responsibility toward others. Now, when we
(03:33):
work with children on things related to moral development, it
sort of sets their moral compass for all the years
to come. Right, So, if I'm thinking about what do
I want to talk with children about in large group time,
maybe we want to focus on the sort of problem
solving that helps children distinguish between right and wrong.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
Right because I feel like, if we're not going to
focus on it in large group, when are they going
to learn it? If we're not going to discuss these things,
how are they going to learn it?
Speaker 3 (04:06):
You know, the benefit of talking about right and wrong
with the whole group versus just one or two children
is that everyone then has the opportunity to develop an
understanding of what are the norms or what are the
expected behaviors? Norms are like the expected behaviors what are
they in a school? Because although a child may be
exhibiting acceptable behavior, it doesn't mean they understand all the
(04:27):
right and wrong in the norms right right, So it
gives everyone an opportunity to ponder this, and it gives
the children a chance to problem solve together. As we've
said probably in previous episodes, large group is a perfect
time to talk about if there's been a dilemma, there's
been a problem in your class, a social or emotional problem,
to sit with the children with dolls or puppets and
(04:48):
reenact it and talk about what is happening right now,
what is the doll feeling? How can we help?
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Right?
Speaker 3 (04:57):
The perfect time to do it because nobody's highly emotional,
because they're not in the middle of the issue. But
also I want you to think about your read alouds.
Let's think about what books we select for read alouds.
What do I select or what other people what?
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Generally speaking, I mean, I do have some social I
do do a lot of social emotional at morning meeting,
so I do have some social emotional books. So like
Stick and Stone I read because that's a good friendship book.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
I love Stick and Stone.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
The Rabbit Listened, which is just about being that sometimes
somebody just wants you to listen. They don't need you
to fix all the problems, they just need to be there.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
That's one of my favorites. I love that book.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
But I think sometimes people focus more on theme based
books rather than social emotional, moral development books.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Which is okay to do sometimes, right, Yeah, But also
we need to be thinking about how many times this
week did I read to these children a story that
had a plot that focused on social, emotional and moral development.
And social emotional and moral development are intertwined because the
ability to have empathy to understand that other people have
(06:07):
feelings and to understand their feelings. That's a social emotional skill,
and it is part of our moral development to develop empathy, right,
it's part of how we become moral people, moral people
to understand that other We don't want other people to
hurt sure in any way, emotionally or physically. You know,
when I look at the definition, it also talks about
(06:28):
acting not only with empathy, but with fairness and responsibility
toward others. That whole fairness is a social skill. Yeah, right,
But if we do a really good job of supporting
the children's understanding of these social and emotional skills, that
becomes the foundation, the underpinning for their moral development and
(06:48):
how they're going to walk through this world. You know,
I think this world would be a really great place
if people were generous, not only with something like money,
but also generous in spirit, Like let's give people the
benefit of the doubt, for example, Yes, right, let's try
and see a situation from that other person's point of view,
which is sorely lacking in this twenty twenty five world.
(07:11):
No one, it seems to me, attempts to see anything
from another point of view. They don't. They really don't, folks, folks,
they really don't. You know, what was an amazing social
experiment for me? I don't know, if I've described this
to you before, Allison, it's an amazing social experiment. To me,
when I go to the gym and I walk on
the treadmill at the gym, there's in front of me
(07:34):
there's like this whole bank of television screens right, and
they're all on different channels. In the gym I go to.
One set of political beliefs is over on the left
hand television. The other one is over on the far
right hand television. And it's not, by the way, the
way you think the left is on the right and
the right it's all left. But to stand in the
(07:57):
middle on a treadmill and to look at the headline
here in the headlines there, you realize the different information
we're all being fed. And that's what feeds into our
different perspectives. And in order to combat that, we have
to try to get to know what each other are thinking.
Right in today's world, there's just this lack of trying
(08:17):
to understand the point of view of other people and
where it came from, and what their lives were like
and what helped them to develop that point of view.
We can help children to develop that in early childhood
so that they develop a sense of other people feel
differently than me. We can listen to and understand that
(08:38):
other people can feel differently and accept that and not
reject people outright. Right. You know, when I think about
moral development in the world, it has to do with
generosity of spirit. I am not required to agree with anyone,
nor are any of you listening or watching. We're not
(09:01):
required to agree with anyone. We just have to understand
that other people have different points of view because of
their own personal experiences, and maybe we should learn about that.
Maybe we can start to set that up through the
books we read, the conversations we have to teach children.
You know, when you're reading a book with young children
that has a really good social, emotional, moral lesson, we
(09:23):
should be talking about not only what was the plot
and what was the lesson, but also how did the
characters feel right? How do you think this character felt?
And I feel like you can do that with almost
every book.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
There's always something in any book that you read, whether
it's a book meant for moral development or not, that
you can stop at any point be like, how do
you think this character feels right? Now? Right? If you
were in this.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Situation, what would you do?
Speaker 4 (09:52):
How would you help this character, you know, or there's
always questions that you can ask. You could turn it
into a moral development lesson by reading books that are
not necessarily geared towards more development.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Yeah, you're right, you know, you know, And part of
the definition was moral development includes feeling sense of responsibility
to others.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
Yeah, that's something I talk about in my group a lot,
and it usually is a group it's like, how can
we help this person?
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Right, right, like here's how do we help this person
feel better? Or how do we help or even if like, hey,
here's what's happening at school, how can we make this
situation better so that the entire school benefits.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Sometimes which is hard for threes, but if you start
talking about that, now they might have ideas that you
didn't even think of, you know, because they might say
something or I think just getting them in the mindset
of this is stuff that we discussed because we want
to help, right, We want to help people. We want
(10:52):
to help the people in this class, We want to
help the people in the school, We want.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
To help the school in itself.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
We want to help the class. If you start them
by talking about it, then it just because of a
normal thing, this is what we talk about, this is
how we help, this is what we do. It's just
now it's in their mind.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
I feel like sometimes that whole notion of we're gonna
teach children that they have a sense of responsibility in society,
society and to each other ends up being an event
like once a year we're gonna collect items for the
animal shelter or once a year we're going to collect
food for the hungry, right, And it becomes like an event, right,
(11:27):
much less connected maybe to the children than the adults
who they are with, right.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
But it should really be an everyday thing.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
It should be a constant thing.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
One of the things that we talked about in my
class was like, we have these people at the public
school that help us. One of those people is the
woman who makes our lunch for the cat which works
in the cafeteria. And I asked them, like, how can
we make her feel better about doing her job every day, right,
because she works very very hard to provide lunch for
god knows how many people are in the school. And
(11:58):
it was a simple, simple answer of why don't we
just say thank you when we're leaving the cafeteria.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
We'll all stop by her little window and we'll all
stop and we'll say thank you, miss Holly, and then
we'll move on. And that was it, and that was
their simple idea. We now do it every single day Now.
I don't even have to remind them to do it.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
They just do it because it's become like the second
nature thing, like when.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
People help you, you say thank you.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
You know, it's so then it turned into not just her,
like how do we help the janitor, like he helped
us clean up a mess today, Like you make sure
you say thank you to them, And it just became
this thing. It doesn't have to be these big, huge
events of like we're collecting food for animals or like
having a food drive for Thanksgiving.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
It could just be like and all those things are
great and were and do them, but there needs to
be like we need to be giving intentional thought to
when I have these children in the large group, how
can I teach them about being part of a society,
Because that's what a large group is, right, purpose of
large group is to teach children they're part of a
community and here's how a community functions. So instead of
(13:00):
focusing so much on how their legs are when they're sitting.
Who cares? I don't care. Who cares? Who cares? They're
willing to sit and sit, and they're willing to sit
and pay attention. I don't really care how you're sitting.
We've attached so much importance to things that don't matter.
We've attached importance to how are they sitting. We've attached
(13:22):
importance to how long they sit there? Folks, they have
a tiny little attention span. The average attention span of
a four year old is eight minutes, just so you know,
that's all you got of their attention. We've attached importance
to things that have very little meaning to the children,
like today is and making them recite a date. Who
we think math belongs in this large group? No, it doesn't.
(13:44):
Math belongs in small group. Okay, any math lesson belongs
in small group where they can work with manipulatives and
really grasp it.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
And when we read books, I find that sometimes we focus,
and it's true for me too. We focus more on, oh,
here's the vocabulary in this book, or what's this picture
showing you the.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Reading comprehension part of it?
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Of like do you remember what we read?
Speaker 4 (14:10):
We read this book recall, the recall of it, instead
of focusing on the emotions, the characters, the social aspect
of the book.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Correct, you know, Like, so we need to be thinking.
I think every time we have a large group of
children together, how can I support their understanding.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Of being.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Not functioning? But being a productive is a better word productive,
a productive society, a productive member of society. You know,
I've often said, and I'm sure many of you have too,
that school is a microcosm of society. It is like
a little mini society where children can learn to function
in a society. Yes, it is so if your children,
if these children are coming to school, part of our
(14:50):
job is to teach them how to function in a society.
I just don't know if we put that much intention
into it all the time. I think we tend to
focus around other things. Yeah, so lots of attention to
that from here on in, folks. You know, when you
think about the weeks coming, when you're lesson planning, or
you're reflecting on what's past, think about, like, did I
(15:12):
support their ability to develop morality as part of a society? Right,
Because it's the under everything we do is the foundation
for their future. It's the underpinning for all their brain connections.
So let's do it a really good job this time,
right with this generation. We hope, folks, that you will
(15:33):
let us know what you're thinking, what you want to know,
any topics that you would love to know if we
could talk about on this podcast, So please do go
to our website, which you can access through the QR
code that's on YouTube Allison's being out of the way
of it again, so you can access it through that
QR code, or simply by going to how Preschool Teachers
Do It dot com and contact us. We do attempt
(15:56):
to get back to everyone who contacts us, So let
us know what you're thinking, especially if it's productive and positive,
even if it's not, okay, and we will catch you
next time on the podcast.
Welcome to How Preschool Teachers Do It.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
This is Alison Kenso's I am an early childhood educator.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
And this is Cindy tarror Bush. I am an early
childhood consultant.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
This podcast is for parents and early childhood professionals.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Let our experience and research based knowledge become your guide.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Hi preschool peeps, Hi pee. We really hope you enjoyed
our last episode, which was so much fun. It was
so much fun. Today a little more serious, but not
like sad serious. Yeah, not worship, not the big, big serious.
So welcome back. We hope that you've gone to YouTube
and checked out the QR code that is now in
(00:44):
our background on the screen and held your camera up
to it and then tapped on the website it names
and check that out. Just what that's all we're going
to say about it at this point, So please go
check that out. And also we want to thank people
who are listening from around the world in the country.
Go ahead, Romania, so hello everyone in Romania. Hello, and
(01:07):
Omaha Nebraska. So you people in Romania and Omaha, Nebraska
who are listening, we thank you and we want you
to spread the word. Yes, now the onus is on
you and speaking of a good onus, speaking of like
a hot topic and a good onness. We're here to
(01:28):
talk about something. You know, we've talked about large group
in the past, we're here talking about honestly, we're being honest.
We've talked about large group, but I don't think we've
talked about it in this way. And so we wanted
to bring something to your attention that actually one of
my college students brought to the attention of the class
and I loved it, and I said, I'm gonna, you know,
(01:49):
I really want to talk about this on the podcast. Uh,
and that's what should we be focusing our large group on.
And this student said something that I thought was really interesting,
the way that she looks at large group. So when
we're talking about large group, we're talking about what you
may call circle time, morning meeting, end of day, large group, right,
whatever you call your large group end of day meeting,
(02:11):
which you should be having. But also large groups can
be read alouds when you've gathered a large group to
go outside and you're all walking together, when you are
kind of all just kind of eating.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Yeah, that's a large gather activity.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
So I want you to think about not only the
morning meeting, but all your others, particularly when you're reading
to children, because I don't know that we always focus
this way. And what my student was talking about was
the fact that she believes that these large group gatherings
of young children should be always focused on moral development.
(02:49):
So I'm gonna read to you what AI says about
moral development because I thought it was actually a really
good definition. Yeah, artificial intelligence isn't always really great, but
in this case, I thought it was when they were Yeah, okay. So,
according to the AI bots, moral development refers to the
process by which individuals learn to distinguish between right and wrong,
(03:12):
developing the ability to make ethical decisions based on their
understanding of societal values and norms, and is important because
it allows people to contribute positively to society by acting
with empathy, fairness, and responsibility toward others. Now, when we
(03:33):
work with children on things related to moral development, it
sort of sets their moral compass for all the years
to come. Right, So, if I'm thinking about what do
I want to talk with children about in large group time,
maybe we want to focus on the sort of problem
solving that helps children distinguish between right and wrong.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
Right because I feel like, if we're not going to
focus on it in large group, when are they going
to learn it? If we're not going to discuss these things,
how are they going to learn it?
Speaker 3 (04:06):
You know, the benefit of talking about right and wrong
with the whole group versus just one or two children
is that everyone then has the opportunity to develop an
understanding of what are the norms or what are the
expected behaviors? Norms are like the expected behaviors what are
they in a school? Because although a child may be
exhibiting acceptable behavior, it doesn't mean they understand all the
(04:27):
right and wrong in the norms right right, So it
gives everyone an opportunity to ponder this, and it gives
the children a chance to problem solve together. As we've
said probably in previous episodes, large group is a perfect
time to talk about if there's been a dilemma, there's
been a problem in your class, a social or emotional problem,
to sit with the children with dolls or puppets and
(04:48):
reenact it and talk about what is happening right now,
what is the doll feeling? How can we help?
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Right?
Speaker 3 (04:57):
The perfect time to do it because nobody's highly emotional,
because they're not in the middle of the issue. But
also I want you to think about your read alouds.
Let's think about what books we select for read alouds.
What do I select or what other people what?
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Generally speaking, I mean, I do have some social I
do do a lot of social emotional at morning meeting,
so I do have some social emotional books. So like
Stick and Stone I read because that's a good friendship book.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
I love Stick and Stone.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
The Rabbit Listened, which is just about being that sometimes
somebody just wants you to listen. They don't need you
to fix all the problems, they just need to be there.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
That's one of my favorites. I love that book.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
But I think sometimes people focus more on theme based
books rather than social emotional, moral development books.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Which is okay to do sometimes, right, Yeah, But also
we need to be thinking about how many times this
week did I read to these children a story that
had a plot that focused on social, emotional and moral development.
And social emotional and moral development are intertwined because the
ability to have empathy to understand that other people have
(06:07):
feelings and to understand their feelings. That's a social emotional skill,
and it is part of our moral development to develop empathy, right,
it's part of how we become moral people, moral people
to understand that other We don't want other people to
hurt sure in any way, emotionally or physically. You know,
when I look at the definition, it also talks about
(06:28):
acting not only with empathy, but with fairness and responsibility
toward others. That whole fairness is a social skill. Yeah, right,
But if we do a really good job of supporting
the children's understanding of these social and emotional skills, that
becomes the foundation, the underpinning for their moral development and
(06:48):
how they're going to walk through this world. You know,
I think this world would be a really great place
if people were generous, not only with something like money,
but also generous in spirit, Like let's give people the
benefit of the doubt, for example, Yes, right, let's try
and see a situation from that other person's point of view,
which is sorely lacking in this twenty twenty five world.
(07:11):
No one, it seems to me, attempts to see anything
from another point of view. They don't. They really don't, folks, folks,
they really don't. You know, what was an amazing social
experiment for me? I don't know, if I've described this
to you before, Allison, it's an amazing social experiment. To me,
when I go to the gym and I walk on
the treadmill at the gym, there's in front of me
(07:34):
there's like this whole bank of television screens right, and
they're all on different channels. In the gym I go to.
One set of political beliefs is over on the left
hand television. The other one is over on the far
right hand television. And it's not, by the way, the
way you think the left is on the right and
the right it's all left. But to stand in the
(07:57):
middle on a treadmill and to look at the headline
here in the headlines there, you realize the different information
we're all being fed. And that's what feeds into our
different perspectives. And in order to combat that, we have
to try to get to know what each other are thinking.
Right in today's world, there's just this lack of trying
(08:17):
to understand the point of view of other people and
where it came from, and what their lives were like
and what helped them to develop that point of view.
We can help children to develop that in early childhood
so that they develop a sense of other people feel
differently than me. We can listen to and understand that
(08:38):
other people can feel differently and accept that and not
reject people outright. Right. You know, when I think about
moral development in the world, it has to do with
generosity of spirit. I am not required to agree with anyone,
nor are any of you listening or watching. We're not
(09:01):
required to agree with anyone. We just have to understand
that other people have different points of view because of
their own personal experiences, and maybe we should learn about that.
Maybe we can start to set that up through the
books we read, the conversations we have to teach children.
You know, when you're reading a book with young children
that has a really good social, emotional, moral lesson, we
(09:23):
should be talking about not only what was the plot
and what was the lesson, but also how did the
characters feel right? How do you think this character felt?
And I feel like you can do that with almost
every book.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
There's always something in any book that you read, whether
it's a book meant for moral development or not, that
you can stop at any point be like, how do
you think this character feels right? Now? Right? If you
were in this.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Situation, what would you do?
Speaker 4 (09:52):
How would you help this character, you know, or there's
always questions that you can ask. You could turn it
into a moral development lesson by reading books that are
not necessarily geared towards more development.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Yeah, you're right, you know, you know, And part of
the definition was moral development includes feeling sense of responsibility
to others.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
Yeah, that's something I talk about in my group a lot,
and it usually is a group it's like, how can
we help this person?
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Right, right, like here's how do we help this person
feel better? Or how do we help or even if like, hey,
here's what's happening at school, how can we make this
situation better so that the entire school benefits.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Sometimes which is hard for threes, but if you start
talking about that, now they might have ideas that you
didn't even think of, you know, because they might say
something or I think just getting them in the mindset
of this is stuff that we discussed because we want
to help, right, We want to help people. We want
(10:52):
to help the people in this class, We want to
help the people in the school, We want.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
To help the school in itself.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
We want to help the class. If you start them
by talking about it, then it just because of a
normal thing, this is what we talk about, this is
how we help, this is what we do. It's just
now it's in their mind.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
I feel like sometimes that whole notion of we're gonna
teach children that they have a sense of responsibility in society,
society and to each other ends up being an event
like once a year we're gonna collect items for the
animal shelter or once a year we're going to collect
food for the hungry, right, And it becomes like an event, right,
(11:27):
much less connected maybe to the children than the adults
who they are with, right.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
But it should really be an everyday thing.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
It should be a constant thing.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
One of the things that we talked about in my
class was like, we have these people at the public
school that help us. One of those people is the
woman who makes our lunch for the cat which works
in the cafeteria. And I asked them, like, how can
we make her feel better about doing her job every day, right,
because she works very very hard to provide lunch for
god knows how many people are in the school. And
(11:58):
it was a simple, simple answer of why don't we
just say thank you when we're leaving the cafeteria.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
We'll all stop by her little window and we'll all
stop and we'll say thank you, miss Holly, and then
we'll move on. And that was it, and that was
their simple idea. We now do it every single day Now.
I don't even have to remind them to do it.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
They just do it because it's become like the second
nature thing, like when.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
People help you, you say thank you.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
You know, it's so then it turned into not just her,
like how do we help the janitor, like he helped
us clean up a mess today, Like you make sure
you say thank you to them, And it just became
this thing. It doesn't have to be these big, huge
events of like we're collecting food for animals or like
having a food drive for Thanksgiving.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
It could just be like and all those things are
great and were and do them, but there needs to
be like we need to be giving intentional thought to
when I have these children in the large group, how
can I teach them about being part of a society,
Because that's what a large group is, right, purpose of
large group is to teach children they're part of a
community and here's how a community functions. So instead of
(13:00):
focusing so much on how their legs are when they're sitting.
Who cares? I don't care. Who cares? Who cares? They're
willing to sit and sit, and they're willing to sit
and pay attention. I don't really care how you're sitting.
We've attached so much importance to things that don't matter.
We've attached importance to how are they sitting. We've attached
(13:22):
importance to how long they sit there? Folks, they have
a tiny little attention span. The average attention span of
a four year old is eight minutes, just so you know,
that's all you got of their attention. We've attached importance
to things that have very little meaning to the children,
like today is and making them recite a date. Who
we think math belongs in this large group? No, it doesn't.
(13:44):
Math belongs in small group. Okay, any math lesson belongs
in small group where they can work with manipulatives and
really grasp it.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
And when we read books, I find that sometimes we focus,
and it's true for me too. We focus more on, oh,
here's the vocabulary in this book, or what's this picture
showing you the.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Reading comprehension part of it?
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Of like do you remember what we read?
Speaker 4 (14:10):
We read this book recall, the recall of it, instead
of focusing on the emotions, the characters, the social aspect
of the book.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Correct, you know, Like, so we need to be thinking.
I think every time we have a large group of
children together, how can I support their understanding.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Of being.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Not functioning? But being a productive is a better word productive,
a productive society, a productive member of society. You know,
I've often said, and I'm sure many of you have too,
that school is a microcosm of society. It is like
a little mini society where children can learn to function
in a society. Yes, it is so if your children,
if these children are coming to school, part of our
(14:50):
job is to teach them how to function in a society.
I just don't know if we put that much intention
into it all the time. I think we tend to
focus around other things. Yeah, so lots of attention to
that from here on in, folks. You know, when you
think about the weeks coming, when you're lesson planning, or
you're reflecting on what's past, think about, like, did I
(15:12):
support their ability to develop morality as part of a society? Right,
Because it's the under everything we do is the foundation
for their future. It's the underpinning for all their brain connections.
So let's do it a really good job this time,
right with this generation. We hope, folks, that you will
(15:33):
let us know what you're thinking, what you want to know,
any topics that you would love to know if we
could talk about on this podcast, So please do go
to our website, which you can access through the QR
code that's on YouTube Allison's being out of the way
of it again, so you can access it through that
QR code, or simply by going to how Preschool Teachers
Do It dot com and contact us. We do attempt
(15:56):
to get back to everyone who contacts us, So let
us know what you're thinking, especially if it's productive and positive,
even if it's not, okay, and we will catch you
next time on the podcast.
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