HD Kindergarten Teacher Training

Recently, Sandra Lee, an expert in Montessori education, visited HD Qingdao and gave a comprehensive training to kindergarten teachers on the implementation of Montessori teaching. Teacher growth is an important element of HD, and various trainings such as inviting great experts to schools, leading teachers to go out for training, and organizing teaching and research in multiple schools have helped every teacher grow.

Training thoughts：

Jennifer：

Sandra Lee is a confident presenter of Montessori strategies. Some information I found useful that I believe should be shared with parents…Children need enough input of vocabulary before they can output. Children need an oral vocabulary base to understand what they read, and comprehension is the most important part of reading. To help our ESL students communicate we need to build up their knowledge of vocabulary.

One area of Sandra Lee’s training that I have started to implement in my Prep class is, listening. To encourage and help children have focus and listen to the source. We have started this in our Circle Time. I will play a sound or say a word and the children must listen carefully and quietly to hear what the sound/word is.

We already use My Turn Your Turn so I was happy to hear Sandra Lee speak of the importance of this strategy.

One area of Sandra Lee’s training that I would like to implement in the near future is Story Cards. Using cards to help children identify elements of a story they listen to..Who? What happened? Where did it happen? How did it end? Moving from here into the retelling of a story when the children are ready.

Rachel：

Empowerment – After the training, I felt empowered to take control of my materials and to reorganize them in a more effective way. Training is a great way to remind us of our tools in the classroom and how to best utilize them.

Materials – Sharing how to use the materials to our benefit in the Montessori classroom was a crucial part of the training, and it helped me understand how to adapt the materials already in the classroom for English learning.

Movement – Reminding us to move around the classroom was beneficial.

Immediate Effect:

I took the time after training to reorganize my shelves and to incorporate more of the Montessori materials into my table time. The training helped enable cooperation and collaboration between the ESL materials and the Montessori materials.