How to Teach Children in Wartime? Tips for Summer Academy Trainees

What should be the learning load during distance learning, how to deliver information to students and is it worth talking to children about their feelings – Yanina Khizhinska, a guest expert, EdEra methodologist and Academic Director of the Unique School, shared her thoughts concerning these and other questions with the trainees of the Summer Academy of the Learning Together project.

The key objective of education in wartime is to provide psychological support, communicate and switch children’s attention.

The learning load during distance learning should be adequate. At the very beginning, it is not worth presenting new topics, it might be better to focus on repeating the material in order to restore brain’s ability to perceive loads.

It is therefore necessary to treat students’ possible absent-mindedness with understanding. After hard emotional experiences, cognitive processes and consciousness are somewhat slowed down – this is due to the fact that there has been a threat to life.

It is recommended to avoid negative grades and extensive homework assignments. Instead, it is better to create situations of success and positive motivation. It is also worth talking to children about their feelings and emotions during these times.

Here are 5 key tips on how to teach children in wartime:

• deliver information in a dosed manner – the brain can’t remember everything at once;
• students must return to the material again and again, because after the first touch of new information, the brain displaces most of it;
• it is worth planning the practice and application of knowledge in a real context;
• use the micro-learning approach – it is more convenient for the child to study the topic in small portions;
• let students live their emotions – children will better remember what they felt.

The speaker also shared the structure of an online lesson, which will make it as efficient and useful as possible for students. Such lesson should have the following components:

• establishment of an emotional connection;
• discussions, dreams of the future;
• repetition;
• breathing exercises (draw a flower or a cake with candles by air);
• the main cognitive part;
• physical exercises, movements;
• interaction, discussion, game;
• results.

The Summer Academy on the Ukrainian language as the state language for methodologists of in-service teacher training institutions and teachers who teach Ukrainian in primary schools with instruction in Romanian and Hungarian in Zakarpattia and Chernivtsi regions aims at improving pedagogical excellence in applying modern methods of teaching Ukrainian as the state language to students.

The “Summer Academy-2022” was held from 15 to 19 August 2022 in an online format. The circle of experts of the Summer Academy consisted of specialists from Ukraine and Canada. More than 60 participants took part in the training.