The Importance Of Visual Timetables In Early Childhood Education

May 29, 2014 sarah Uncategorized

If you are responsible for educating young children, you will in all likelihood be faced with a wide variety of abilities and varying degrees of understanding among the various children. If you are faced with any of a variety of specific learning difficulties then you will be faced with an even greater range of challenges in your attempts to make sure that the children all understand the schedule for the school week. If your class should be taken on any particular day by a supply teacher then they will need to rapidly understand your plans for the working week so that the class can continue following the correct program of work for the time period involved. To help staff and children alike understand what they should be doing and when, the visual timetable is an invaluable tool among primary teaching resources in helping to bring harmony to an already hectic environment.

Visual timetables help pupils to realise precisely what it is that they are expected to be doing over a period of time such as the school day. The school day would otherwise be bereft of the structure that they give and often help in reducing stress. Symbols or photographs are used to represent the tasks, activities or lessons and the significance of their graphical representations are explained to the pupil. The visual timetable is then exhibited to give a visual reference for what is happening across the period of time in question.

Often a visual timetable will display the word of the activity alongside a graphical representation of the activity. For a younger child it could be used simply for morning or afternoon activities. For an older pupil it may be a graphical timetable for the week. Visual timetables are adapted and used according to the particular requirements of the children in question.

A visual timetable is easy to make using symbols or photographs and is a useful tool in the classroom, helping to give pupils some structure to their day. There are plenty of advantages to using visual timetables as an aid to classroom management. They promote autonomy, reduce anxiety, increase confidence and build on a pupil’s strength as a visible learner. They also build on a pupil’s need for routine, predictability and organisation. It will also help to instil a sense of permanency.

Many children on the autistic spectrum can grapple with the complexities of the school day and their early years resources will benefit from being planned to take account of this. They regularly prefer to have fixed routines as the world can appear quite unpredictable to them. It is tough for them to adapt to the challenges posed by day-to-day changes so it is best to give them warning well in advance to avoid stress or a sense of loss of control. Visual timetables can be used to break an activity down into steps giving children a sense of structure to their day and making them feel safe. Visual timetables provide prompts to help children know what area of the curriculum they will be studying, what they’ll need to get their work done and what the social organisation of the class will be. This will reduce anxiety with the end result that children often exhibit less anti-social, undesirable behaviour.

Visual timetables may be employed for the whole class or reserved for individual children. If they are going to be used for the whole class they have to be displayed in a place where they can be seen clearly by everyone. If a visual timetable is utilized for an individual child then a smaller version can be created. The teacher and any school room aides must refer to it in the school day till the children are completely acquainted with it. The timetable should be designed either from left to right or from top to bottom.

Some children will benefit by being consulted regarding the particular symbols or graphical representations to be used. The child will feel better disposed towards the timetable and it will mean more to them as an organisational tool. Some children may need individualised visual timetables because they may be partaking in different activities to the rest of the class. A private timetable specific to particular children may include individual speech therapy, physiotherapy or medical needs that won’t be relevant for the rest of the class.

Visual timetables can be helpful to help calm conduct patterns. The timetable will indicate when a break occurs so this is going to be helpful for a child on a behaviour intervention plan. He or she will know when a break is due and how much longer they need to be moderating their behaviour before a reward or break will be allowed.

Visual timetables could be a very helpful classroom management and organisational tool for the teacher in that if a supply or stand in teacher has to take over the class, they can straight away see the construction of the school day. Teachers using a visual timetable will find that their children become less reliant on teaching staff and verbal instructions and the class will generally benefit from a decrease in difficult conduct and repeated questions. A visual timetable can consequently be of significant advantage for any classroom.

It will of course be a not entirely straightforward task to match the educational resources employed on a day-to-day basis with every child’s individual needs. This requirement is one that each and every teacher is faced with and will continue to face, with each passing year, as new children join the school to learn their early years skills. The forward-thinking class teacher will have available a varied collection of primary teaching resources which will be selected with the goal of fitting the needs of the widest variety of individual needs so that the young children of every year can go forward to the next stage of their education, with greater enlightenment and better capable to face the challenges ahead.

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