CC BY
33Sciences of Europe # 57, (2020)
PEDAGOGICAL SCIENCES
15
EDUCATING SURVIVAL SKILLS FOR PRESCHOOLERS IN THE MOUNTAINOUS REGION OF
VIETNAM, AN URGENT ISSUE AT PRESENT
Phi Thi Hieu
Associate Professor Ph.D of Thai Nguyen University of Education
Viet Nam
ABSTRACT
Survival skills are a number of an individual's life skills that are able to support and determine the safety of his life in difficult and dangerous situations that suddenly happen. The article has discussed survival skills that need to be developed for preschoolers in mountainous areas of Vietnam.
Keywords: Survival skill, mountainous region, preschoolers, educating, life skill.
1. Introduction
In recent years, educating life skills has been widely discussed and a concern around the world. In the World Forum on Education for All in Senegal (2000), the Dakar Action Plan set out six objectives, of which three objectives stated: "Each country must ensure that learners can continue a program on appropriate educational life skills". Objective number 6 identified the requirement: "When assessing the quality of education, it is necessary to evaluate the life skills of learners" [4].
Early Childhood education always aims at the goal of comprehensive education, preparing the necessary competencies, qualities and social skills for preschoolers. Teaching life skills to preschoolers has been being an urgent task in preschools today. In Vietnam, early childhood educational programs issued together with the Circular 17/2009/TT-BGBT dated July 25, 2009 by the Minister of Education and Training also identified: "To help children to develop physically, emotionally, mentally, aesthetically. To form the first elements of personality; preparing children for their first grade. To form and develop children's psychological functions, abilities and qualities which are fundamental, essential and age-appropriate life skills. To arouse and maximize their potential abilities, lay the foundation for learning at the next educational levels and for their lifelong learning" [2].
Survival skills are a number of an individual's life skills that are able to support and determine the safety of his life in difficult and dangerous situations that suddenly happen. At birth, a survival instinct is existing for everyone. However, to make that instinct become a skill, it requires an educational and training process. That process should start from an early age, right from a preschool age, to ensure it is consistent with each child's characteristics. In mountainous areas of Vietnam, especially in remote and isolated areas, it is sparsely populated and the educational level in these areas is rather low. Due to the mountainous terrain characteristics, children are more likely to encounter injuries, such as falling down a chasm, drowning, or heartbreak grass poisoning (la ngon poisoning) as well there are other concerns, such as being bitten or stung by animals or insects. Besides, the issue of child trafficking is still complicated and occurring, which threatens the safety of children. Therefore, educating survival skills for children is an urgent requirement that requires the attention of the society, families and schools, as a
whole. They must pay attention in implementing and handling the issue. In this article, we have discussed survival skills that need to be developed for preschoolers in mountainous areas of Vietnam.
2. Survival skills that need being educated for preschoolers at school
Each survival skill includes the following parts: identifying dangerous situations, controlling emotions, controlling situations and responding to dangerous situations. Therefore, during the process of educating survival skills for preschoolers at school, teachers need to equip children with the knowledge to identify dangers in specific situations, and calmly find appropriate responses in order to escape from those types of situations.
*Skills to prevent food and heartbreak grass poisoning
Educating skills to prevent food and heartbreak grass poisoning by instilling in children the knowledge and skills to help them identify useful and harmful foods; Know how to eat and drink in a healthy way; Know to ensure safety for themselves when eating and drinking; Identify toxic chemical solutions; Also know to stay away from the honeycomb charcoal cookers and the wood cookers, which are heating or on fire near the living area in order to avoid poisoning of breathing air from the toxic smoke; recognize the heartbreak grass, as well as how harmful it is when eaten; Don't go to the forest to find heartbreak grass to eat by themselves; Don't take medicine without an adult's guidance; Never put objects in their mouth without knowing what it is or what substance it is; Never play, touch, smell or taste anything that they already know is harmful and toxic; When eating poisonous plants or vegetation, they know to call/ ask an adult to come for help; Know to tell adults when seeing/finding that poisoning things are don't carefully stored etc.
*Skills to prevent and avoid drowning
To develop skills to prevent and avoid drowning for preschoolers, teachers need to help them notice that: Don't bathe alone in a tub or basin; Don't play close to the vicinity of water or in water environments; Only practice swimming in rescue places and with adults, and always comply with regulations at the swimming pools and swimming areas; Don't take water from ponds, lakes, rivers, streams, wells, tanks, jars etc by themselves because it is too much for children to do that and to keep safe for themselves at the same time, as a
Sciences of Europe # 57, (2020)_
result, they can easily slip and drown; Absolutely don't wade across streams during thunderstorms and floods; Know how to comply with safety regulations when participating in waterways etc. Especially, teaching children how to swim is a very important job to help children avoid drowning.
*Skills to avoid from getting lost and kidnapped
In mountainous areas, for isolated school campuses, most children commute to school back and forth by themselves. Consequently, it is easy for them to face dangers, such as getting lost or/and kidnapped. Therefore, teachers need to teach them the skills to respond and escape from the situation, such as: Stay calm, don't cry; Know the act of phoning parents or looking for home address; Know to seek help from a reliable person such as the police officer, security guard etc; Know their own personal information: first and last name, home address; Know the personal information of family members: first and last name of parents and their phone number; How to recognize shady characters and don't follow them; Don't open house doors for strangers to enter when home alone; Don't follow or receive gifts from strangers; Don't drink water from strangers without kids' relative grown-ups permission; Recognize strangers when receiving phone calls and don't reveal personal information when on phone with them; Know how to memorize phone numbers of relatives/ or and family members, or/and emergency numbers to phone in case etc.
*Skills to avoid electric shock
To form these life skills in children, teachers needs to teach them the following: Don't touch the sockets, don't play or/and poke into the power outlets, don't automatically plug objects into the socket; Know to stay away from falling power wires; Especially when it rains, don't hide under a huge tall tree etc; Know how to comply with safety regulations in the electric corridors (don't climb on the high-voltage electric poles, don't poke the wires with a stick, don't hook the electric wires indiscriminately etc).
*Skills to avoid animal bites and stings
To avoid animal bites and stings, teachers need to help children know the following: Don't play near the hives; Don't play near the bushes in order to avoid snake bites, if you have to pass the area, use a stick to brandish the bush ahead before you go and wait to make sure there are no snakes coming out then you can pass. They also need to learn to identify the differences between dangerous animals and harmless, friendly animals, and also know where dangerous animals inhabit and stay away from their home.
* Skills to avoid falling and chasm falling
In mountainous areas, children in isolated school campuses are rarely brought to school by their family members, but they commute to school back and forth all by themselves. In the rain, they may have to travel long distances on a very slippery road, or have to go through a deep chasm, so it is very dangerous for them to commute in such a hostile way. In remote areas, there is no play playground for children, so ethnic children play freely on the hillsides. If their parents/ grown-ups don't pay attention to them, it is likely that they climb up a tree and will have a great fall which results in a
serious injury. To prevent this kind of accident, teachers need to teach children the following skills: Avoid dangerous games, such as: jumping down from a height, chasing each other or playing in dangerous places, no games like horse jumping etc; Instruct children with fall prevention skills when entering areas or using objects that cause falls; When taking the stairs: Step into the middle of the stairs, eyes look down carefully at the legs, hold tight on handrails; Wear slippers when going to the bathroom and wet floor to avoid slipping; Don't walk on the floor with wet feet; Know to seek help when having an accident while playing by themselves; Don't climb, run and/or jump near walls, piles of bricks and electric poles; Refuse playing dangerous games which could result in a bad fall.
*Skills to avoid suffocation
To avoid suffocation, teachers need to teach children the following skills: Don't put small objects into the mouth or nose when playing or doing activities; Don't eat, play, or talk at the same time; When eating fruits with seeds, the seeds should be removed before eating; Be careful and eat slowly while having food and drinks to avoid choking; Eat slowly and chew carefully.
*Skills to avoid fires and burns
In order for children to have skills to avoid fires and burns, teachers need to teach them the skills as follows: Don't stay near objects that can cause burns, such as thermos, boiling stuff on stove etc; Don't eat food or drink water when it is too hot; Don't play with matches, lighters or/and other substances that cause fires, or burns; Identify dangerous objects and places that pose a risk of fires or burns. Educating survival skills for preschoolers at school can be carried out through a number of basic forms through the activities, such as: literature, music educational activities, discovery activities, physical education, fun activities, and other activities and situations occurring during the day. In particular, apart from the close coordination with children's parents, using appropriate educational methods is a condition to ensure effective education of survival skills for preschoolers. The methods are: Situation-solving, brainstorming, verbal (method of communication, conversation, small-group discussion), practice and example. The educational forms and methods need to be flexibly applied, suitable to the age characteristics, circumstances and mountainous areas where children live.
3. Conclusion
Survival skills play an important role in ensuring the safety and normal human development in general and preschoolers in particular. Therefore, formation of these skills in humans at an early age is vitally necessary. With physical and psychological development characteristics, the preschool age is a suitable period to develop survival skills for mountainous children, helping them avoid accidents and injuries, such as skills to avoid drowning, skills to avoid breath-blocking, skills to avoid animal bites and stings, skills to avoid fires and burns, skills to avoid poisoning from food and heartbreak grass leaves, skills to avoid falls and chasm falls . In order to effectively educate children on survival skills, it is necessary to flexibly and rationally use educational methods and forms.
Sciences of Europe # 57, (2020)_
References
1. Bo GD-BT (2017), Thong tu so 01/VBHN-BGDBT ngay 24/01/2017 ban hanh Chuong trinh Giao duc mam non.
2. Phi Thi Hieu (2016), Banh gia nhu cau va xac lap danh muc ky nang song can trang bi cho hoc sinh trung hoc pho thong theo cac nhom doi tuong dac thu,
Be tai Khoa hoc va Cong nghe cap Bo, mä so B2014-TN03-05.
3. Фи.Тхи Хиеу (2015), Теоретические проблемы развития жизненных навыков у старшеклассников Вьетнама, Электронный журнал Психология. Социология. Педагогик. Москва: Из-во «ИНГН»- № 1 (44).
4. http://www.un.org/ru/events/literacy/dakar. htm
DEVELOPING COMMUNICATIVE CAPACITY FOR PRIMARY STUDENTS OF ETHNIC MINORITIES THROUGH EXERCISES ON SYNONYMS
Tran Thi Kim Hoa
Thai Nguyen University of Education
Viet Nam
ABSTRACT
The article has mentioned the matter of developing communication skills for ethnic primary students through synonym exercises. This type of exercise brings students an opportunity to experience and build a number of synonyms as well as creates conditions for them to use the vocabulary to represent things and phenomena vividly in diverse ways and aspects. In addition, it also helps to facilitate the process of accessing and acquiring other knowledge for students.
Keywords: communication skills, exercises, synonyms, synonym exercises, primary students, ethnic minorities, ethnic primary students.
1. Introduction
The Vietnamese language is both a fundamental subject and an instrumental subject for students to acquire knowledge and skills of other subjects in the educational program. For ethnic students, the acquisition of the knowledge and skills of the Vietnamese language is completely new because their mother tongue is far different from the so-called officially national Vietnamese. "Since born, ethnic children have been exposed to speak their mother tongue only, which is the language of ethnic groups. Vietnamese is the common and national language, but it is just the second language for them. It is meant that Vietnamese is not the native language of ethnic students, so they cannot have the same innate advantages to acquire the language as the Vietnamese Kinh students have". Therefore, it is necessary to do research to find ways to overcome these limitations in order to improve the quality of teaching Vietnamese to ethnic students.
People do need a kind of certain language to think, the incomplete vocabulary makes it impossible to use a language as a means of communication. Teaching vocabulary to primary students is to provide them with vocabulary of the language as a means of communication. The richer their vocabulary is, the greater their ability to use the language and the more effective their communication will be. Therefore, providing and expanding vocabulary in general as well as synonyms in particular for students play a key role in the process of forming the basic linguistic skills such as reading, writing, speaking and listening.
Through surveying the linguistic ability of ethnic primary students, we found out that their Vietnamese vocabulary was limited, it was difficult for them to use words in appropriate contexts generally, and it was even more difficult for them to use the correct synonyms particularly. That was because a synonym has a distinct meaning besides its general meaning. Words in
a synonym sequence are often interchangeable in specific contexts, help users to avoid repetition of a language unit for many times which causes redundancy and boredom in discourse. In communication activities, especially in literary, the presence of synonymous means always create special effects for readers and listeners.
The design of the synonym exercise system is one of the ways to bring the synonym phenomenon to penetrate deeper into the memory of ethnic students, so that they experience communicating with the words of different syllabuses but fully express the same ideas and thoughts. Providing a number of synonyms for students means creating conditions for students to use them to represent things and phenomena descriptively in different aspects and angles. In addition, to facilitate the process of accessing and acquiring other knowledge for students.
2. Contents:
2.1. The method of building synonym exercises
From the proposed research orientation, the system of exercises to-be-designed should, first of all, ensure the goal of developing communication skills for students. The ideology of communication has a strong impact on and determines the establishment of the goals in teaching mother tongue, in selecting contents and methods, and in influencing the requirements and tasks of learning each language at school. Research on building synonym exercises for ethnic students is also not out of that ideology. Accordingly, the careful consideration of choosing the linguistic units which are typical and worthy representing the language unit to-be-formed in students becomes indispensable to ensure the principles of simplifying the process of identifying and classifying, optimizing the process of using, meeting the practical goals of using the language when teaching the mother tongue at primary schools. A requirement which needs emphasizing in building a system of synonym exercises to-be-taught is the need of showing
