Independent learning is a pillar of successful lifelong academic achievement, a child’s ability to discover, to persist and to solve problems, achieving self-dependence. It is a long process that commences way before formal education and is based on the building of confidence, executive, and a true passion to discover. These fundamental habits are another major goal in Elizabeth Fraley Kinder Ready. By offering the scaffolding that children require to develop autonomy through the personalized support of Kinder Ready Tutoring, we offer the guided instruction as a springboard on which self-directed exploration transpires, and the mindset that learning is a personal and empowering process.
The development of a strong foundation of confidence and core competence is the initial strategy towards developing independence. A child with doubts about the simplest competencies will automatically be reluctant to cope with things independently. Kinder Ready Elizabeth Fraley’s approach handles this by making sure that mastery is achieved by one-on-one instruction. Starting with a customized test, our teachers single out certain strengths and developmental aspects, and the Kinder Ready Tutoring sessions will aim to develop and reinforce key pre-academic skills. By learning to be fluent in letter sounds, number sense or by following multi-step instructions, a child develops the confidence they need to undertake similar tasks on their own. This is the necessary ingredient of self-initiative; a child has to believe that they can do it, only then will they willingly decide to do it themselves.
The second stage, which is based on confidence, will be instruction on the how-to of learning independently. This focuses on the creation of executive function skills- the mental processes involved in planning, organizing and managing things. These metacognitive strategies in a Kinder Ready Tutoring session are explicitly modeled and practiced by the educators. As they speak, they deliver language that encourages self-direction, e.g. What do you need to do first? or “When you are stuck, what would you do? This coaching aids children in internalizing the process of the approach to challenges. Moreover, Elizabeth Fraley Kinder Ready’s mission is to expose children to more than one way to learn so as to find out what interests them. This is the principle of independence. Once a child is related to the natural interest in learning about dinosaurs, music or building, an inner drive to do so is sparked. A teacher could offer a provocation – an interesting object or open-ended question on whatever the child is passionate about, and leave the child to drive the investigation.
Finally, it is aimed at developing a motivated learner who perceives difficulties as a chance. Kinder Ready Tutoring has a low-pressure environment that is specifically designed to facilitate this transition. It is a safe zone where a child can learn to work on a sub-task in a larger project on their own, knowing that expert help is available nearby, to give them a soft touch instead of taking over. When these behaviors become established, the child will start to carry this independent way of doing things to other environments. They are taught to correct themselves, find resources and persevere. This is readiness in its actual sense, not so much what a child knows, but rather what he has demonstrated that he can learn independently.
For further details on Kinder Ready’s programs, visit their website: https://www.kinderready.com/.
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ElizabethFraleyKinderReady
