Sociology Reflective Journals: Learning, Teamwork, and Materials

This assignment comprises three reflective journals exploring various aspects of sociology within an educational setting. The first journal focuses on learning corners, examining their design, activities, and impact on children's development, highlighting the importance of hands-on activities, risk-taking, and social awareness. The second journal delves into teamwork in the workplace, discussing the importance of collaboration, communication, and positive relationships among staff members to create a harmonious environment. The final journal reflects on the center's material resources, including the organization of different learning spaces, such as music, science, and art corners, and the significance of hygiene and child-friendly materials in promoting effective learning and preventing health issues. The journals are supported by references to relevant literature.

Running head: SOCIOLOGY
Reflective Journal
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author note

Reflective Journal 1
Learning Corners
The incident that I have chosen to reflect is the first day I started working at the
centre. I was very impressed by the centralized design of the classrooms. It had various
learning corners equipped with various materials. The primary focus of the hands-on
activities of the learning corner was creating, encouraging meaningful interaction and
promoting learning through play method (Brown & Lee 2015). .
Through these extended classroom activities are for children of various age groups.
Where children are encouraged to take risks, enhance their problem solving skills, resolve
conflicts and work together. They guided to respect diversity and develop their social
awareness through interaction and understanding feeling of others. Every activity at each
learning corner is designed so, it enhances child’s overall learning skill to grow into a
competent and confident learner who is prepared to take on any future challenges.
There are seven different corners in the school. They are as follows, the Picasso Art
Corner, Shakespeare literacy corner, Michelangelo Blocks corner, Beethoven Music corner,
Hercules Gym Corner, Einstein Science Corner and Chaplin Drama Corner.
Picasso Art Corner
Children have the opportunity to explore their inner artist just like the famous artist
Picasso. They will be able to explore different art forms such as drawing, printing, painting
and sculpting. The object behind encouraging children to explore their creativity and improve
their sense of expression through the various art form. Drawing and sculpting allows them to
appreciate art and enables them to appreciate beauty from different perspective (Alvarez,
2018).

Shakespeare Literacy Corner
Shakespeare is known for exceptional contribution in literature. This corner of
learning inspires to teach children language and literacy skills. Children are encouraged to
learn through creative storytelling, writing, reading activities (Huang,et al, 2016). There is
focus on vocabulary building activity, which enables the children to express themselves
better, using language. A child is able to build relationship through interaction and effective
communication skill. Introducing books and encouraging reading at a very young age,
develops the language learning skills remarkably also allows them to enjoy the reading
process.
Michelangelo Blocks Corner.
As the name suggests, Michelangelo inspires this learning course, which aims to
inspire children to build structures using blocks and other materials. Through this process,
they also learn symmetry, design, proportion, and representation through while being
engaged in a playful activity. These have several advantages as these playful methods
cleverly improves the child’s motor skill, helps them to convert their ideas into tangible
products while simultaneously improving their hand-eye coordination muscle control and fine
motor skill (Peterson, 2015).
Beethoven Music Corner
Beethoven’s incredible artistry as pianist and composer is celebrated in this learning
course. Music is one of the unique and scientific method of teaching children. This course
encourages a child’s interest in music, through singing, and dancing activities. The centre
provides opportunities to children to explore and hone their talent through the various
activities (Green, 2017).

Hercules Gym Corner
Hercules is legendary for his strength and bravery. This section is dedicated to give
the children to develop fitness, mobility, agility, coordination and overall strength of the
child. Engaging the children in athletic activity through, running, jumping, balancing and
other activities, improves the child’s growth, boosts immunity and strength to develop into
strong individuals of tomorrow (Harvey et al, 2018).
Einstein Science corner.
To compete in the world outside, a child must be able to understand the growing
technological and scientific field (Jones & Stapleton 2017). Einstein corner tests the cognitive
and logical thinking skill of the child. The mathematic skills, logical skill is delivered to the
child in simplistic and enjoyable manner that probes the child to discover the world of
science just like the famous physicist Einstein. Through nurturing the curiosity of the child,
they can explore and innovate endlessly in the field of science and mathematics.
Chaplin Drama Corner.
Role-playing is an important tool in earning that draws heavily from dramatics.
Teaching methodology encourages children to engage in imaginary or pre designed play
where various attribute of the child is tested. It provides useful insight to the teacher who can
understand the motivation and limitation of the child and then take action accordingly. Drama
is also a wonderful method where children can show their talent and use their imagination to
interact and improve their social skill and mannerism. It is also a handy tool to deliver
complex ideas through simplistic and engaging method of learning (Wan, 2017).

Reflective Journal 2
Teamwork at my work place
It has been a year since I have begun my work as a programmer helper. Work ethic
and teamwork is valued in this centre. When I started the work I was relatively new and
inexperienced, however, the support and encouragement from my colleagues has been very
motivating. The team consists of five English and Chinese teachers each. There is a provision
of one English and one Chinese teacher for each level. There are two cooking and two
cleaning auntie, each shift has one cook and one cleaner. Their shift timing is from 12 noon
while the other has afternoon shift timing until 4.30 pm. There is a staff in administration
who works part time. I work as a programmer helper in nursery one.
The staff and the principal are always very kind and helpful with each other and
towards me. They display strong work ethic, knowledge and understanding the
developmental needs of children (Wara et al, 2018). Ever since I have been working as a
programme helper I received, immense help from my mentor English teacher is very nice and
kind to me. Her strong passion for working with young children has helped her gain insight,
and helped her build a strong relationship with them. She came to my aid in the initial stages
when I did not know how to make milk or bathe children. She slowly taught me how to
manage the tasks efficiently. Other teachers have also helped me understand and work with
children in my job role.
Teamwork is the basis of productivity in any organisation. Even though I work a part
time shift from 9am to 1pm, and tend to spend a lot of time in caring attending the students, it
is important to foster positive relationship with the students as well as other staff members.
Teamwork is cooperation and when there is understanding between the members of a group,
productivity is better and the overall work environment is motivational as well. This also

builds a harmonious environment for the child to be raised in; they learn coordination skill
from teachers and staffs and emulate them in their habits.
Teamwork is efficient task management tool and is rewarding for a workplace, this
organisation has enabled me to understand that. Working alongside differences may arise but
a good teamwork always seeks to mediate differences and work towards a better future. In
conclusion, a team is core of an organisation and interpersonal relationship is important for a
better productive work place and in return, benefits the students to learn more effectively
(Riebe, Girardi & Whitsed, 2016).
Reflective Journal 3
Material
In this section of the journal, I would like to reflect on the centre’s material resources.
As mentioned earlier, in journal 1, the centre follows a THEME base approach with an MI
curriculum (Kong et al, 2017). It has an open concept environment with various sections such
as music, art science and others, with appropriate learning material and resources for every
learning block.
The music corner has the largest room and is the place where the morning assembly is
held from 9am to 9.30am. Children from different levels come together accompanied by their
respective teachers to sing the national anthem followed by the centre song carpe diem. It has
various musical instruments such as the drums, flutes, guitar, keyboard and others.
They also store the indoor gym equipment in the music room such as basketball, table
tennis equipment, squash rackets and others things. The gym equipment is very safe to use
for young children.

The science corner is the smallest room, but it has all the necessary teaching
equipment. Additionally, they also have a fish tank.
The block corner is the third largest room in the centre and it has lot of blocks to
engage children in a hands-on learning process. The children are taught to place the materials
neatly in the labelled baskets on the shelves after they are done using them. The shelves are
designed in a child friendly manner so they are easily accessible.
There are many books in the literacy corner, which is changed every 6 week. This
allows the children to read a wide variety of books from the library. Each six-week teacher
decides the reading material and borrows books accordingly, after use they return them to the
library. There are also other materials such as microphone, CD player, puzzles, computer and
others where students might listen to an audio book. These resources make the class more
interesting to children.
The art corner is the biggest room, which is also used as a dining area and is place
where children of all levels come together to share meals. The art materials are recyclable and
child friendly. The centre is also very hygienic and washes all their materials every Saturday
especially materials that come in contact with a child, such as mattresses, toys, blocks drama
props and others. These are precautionary measure to prevent outbreak of diseases (Morgan
et al, 2017).

Reference
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