Top 10 Tips for Working with Children
<5 min read
Working with children is an opportunity to learn with young people, not simply to teach to them. The most meaningful experiences begin with relationships: listening closely, creating spaces where children feel seen and valued, and making room for their ideas, stories, questions, languages, and ways of making meaning.
As a LitWorld U participant, keep these ten principles in mind whenever you are learning alongside or facilitating experiences with young people.
1. Listen First, Speak Later.
Before you jump in with an answer, direction, or solution, listen. Pay attention to what children say—and to what they communicate through their questions, ideas, play, silence, and actions. Approach young people with curiosity rather than assumptions. You may be surprised by what you learn when you make space to listen.
2. Center Play as the Important Work of Childhood.
Play is not a break from learning; play is a powerful way children explore, experiment, imagine, solve problems, and make sense of the world. Whenever possible, create opportunities for movement, imagination, games, creativity, and joyful exploration.
3. Center Children’s Own Stories.
Every child comes with experiences, ideas, relationships, traditions, and stories that matter. Look for opportunities to invite children to share their experiences—informally through conversation and formally through speaking, writing, art, performance, or other forms of expression. Their stories are not an “extra”; they are a source of knowledge.
4. Embrace All of the Languages Children Speak.
Being multilingual is an asset, not a deficit. Many children use multiple languages and forms of communication in their everyday lives, even when those ways of communicating are not always recognized in formal learning spaces. Mastery of formal and standardized language structures is an important tool that every child deserves access to—but life, relationships, thinking, and storytelling happen beyond those structures, too. Honor the full linguistic lives of the young people you work with.
5. Make Room for Diverse Stories and Perspectives.
The world is enormous, and its diversity is beautiful. Provide regular access to books, images, experiences, histories, and perspectives that reflect the many ways people live and understand the world. Seek out voices and narratives that have been historically underrepresented. Help children see both their own experiences and unfamiliar experiences as worthy of attention, curiosity, and respect.
6. Value Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening, and Creating.
Children demonstrate their thinking in many different ways. Make space for reading and writing, but also for conversation, storytelling, drawing, building, movement, music, performance, making, and collaboration. Multiple modes of expression give children more opportunities to explore their strengths and demonstrate what they know.
7. Read Aloud Together—and Often.
Reading aloud isn't just for young children. Across ages and grade levels, reading aloud can build language, introduce children to ideas and experiences they may not yet be able to access independently, and create a shared experience for a group. Choose engaging, relevant texts and make the read-aloud interactive. A good read-aloud is an invitation to think, wonder, talk, and connect.
8. Make Space for Curiosity and Exploration.
Pay attention to what young people are interested in—and follow their lead when you can. Give them opportunities to ask questions, pursue ideas, investigate things that fascinate them, and make choices about their learning. You don't need to have every answer. Sometimes your most important role is helping a young person pursue a question.
9. Make Failure Safe.
Young people need spaces where they can try, make mistakes, revise, and try again without fear of embarrassment or judgment. Model this yourself: “I don't know yet” and “Let's figure it out together” are powerful things to say. Treat mistakes as information and experimentation as part of learning.
10. Celebrate Kindness—including Kindness Toward Oneself.
Notice and celebrate the many forms kindness can take: helping someone, including someone, listening carefully, encouraging a peer, caring for a community, or giving yourself permission to try again. Build simple rituals of appreciation into your time together, such as praise circles, affirmations, or moments of gratitude. Help young people recognize that kindness is both something we extend to others and something we practice toward ourselves.
A LitWorld U Reminder
You are entering a child’s world. Enter with curiosity, humility, and joy.
You do not have to be the expert in the room. Your job is to build relationships, create opportunities, listen deeply, and learn alongside young people. When children know that their voices, stories, languages, questions, and ideas matter, they are better able to take the risks that meaningful learning requires.
