Our students and teachers at Sand & Stars Kindergarten experienced several transitions of learning and teaching methods to ensure the effectiveness of our school’s educational programme. Our school operated physically during the early of January, then we shifted to online classes, hybrid learning, and back to entirely physical lessons again.
When Sand & Stars Kindergarten announced the school reopening, our main priority must be to reduce the virus-transmission rates and protect the health and safety of students and staff. We have taken all the safety measures such as submitting RTK test results before returning to school for students and teachers, checking temperature and oxygen levels before entering the classroom. We also ensure that our children wash their hands frequently and maintain physical distancing among friends. The same safety procedure applies through the hybrid learning implementation, where students return to school on a rotational basis.
Benefits of hybrid learning:
- Allows independent learning
- Provides an in-school experience while maintaining social distancing
- Variability for learners
Hybrid learning is particularly challenging for young learners who have limited knowledge and skills of technology devices. Younger children need a level of guidance, social interaction, and tactile-learning opportunities that are difficult to replicate in an online classroom. Nevertheless, our little stars were able to listen to teachers’ instructions and complete the assigned tasks successfully.
Student engagement is a key feature of a classroom. Without it, the lesson will be ineffective and inefficient in any learning approach. Hybrid learning provides simultaneous tasks to physically or virtually present students at school or at home. It is undeniable that the new learning system was initially challenging to adapt for our teachers. Inexperienced teachers with current digital tools had difficulty conducting the lesson while also guiding physically present children in the classroom. Nonetheless, our teachers are willing to put in the extra time and effort to learn new skills.
