An Early Childhood Teacher

The process skills approach to teaching is defined as the educator helping children develop science skills and processes to confidently undertake their own investigations (Campbell, 2012). These skills are developed through: communicating, science language, asking questions, making sense of phenomena, predicting, modelling, conducting investigations, planning, testing, observing, reasoning, and drawing conclusions of science concepts (Campbell, 2012). When the educator assist children’s learning, it is important to put the emphasis on the nature of science and scientific concepts. Guided discovery approach to teaching requires the educator to ask effective questions that encourage children to explore and extend their investigations throughout science learning (Campbell, 2012). This can be developed through play experiences as children explore their world around them. An interactive approach to teaching children is based on questions that lead explorations and the educators to provide essential resources to guide these explorations (Campbell, 2012). It is the educators’ responsibility to support children’s development, ideas, questions, ways of thinking, and develop scientific thinking. Furthermore, an inquiry approach to teaching relates to children investigating the answers to their own

When teaching natural sciences and technology, teachers need to promote an understanding of seeing these subjects as activities to promote curiosity and enjoyment about the world and that what we encounter around us. The history of science and technology should also be integrated with other subjects. Science and technology should be seen as a contribution to social justice and societal development (Motshekga, 2011). A growing need of discovery in science and technology needs to be promoted in order to form interest in ourselves, society and

These lab equipments and books reflect the scientific knowledge and skills program, which is part of our learning learning framework. “Science learning during the early childhood years encourages children to discover the world around them and refine their understanding of it” (Fuentes, 2010).

Even children are capable of understanding the scientific method. On a website intended to help children with their science fair projects, the steps of the method are carefully outlined. These steps include asking a question; doing research; creating a hypothesis; testing the hypothesis through an experiment; analyzing the data; drawing a conclusion and also communicating results. The scientific method studies causal relationships versus the engineering design process, which involves creating something new. Each step of the process contains links to pages which provide further, specific details about each step, such as finding high-quality resources and constructing experiments with appropriate controls.

I believe that as an early childhood educator my goal will be to promote the physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development of each child. I also believe that play should be the base of learning since children learn best by doing. I believe that a balance between teacher-directed and child-initiated activities is essential balance can be developed by using the developmentally appropriate practice approach, which means that activities should be “appropriate for each child and relevant to the child’s ability, needs and interests, also including the child’s family and being respectful to the child’s culture.

As an early childhood educator I believe each child is an exceptional unique individual that needs to be provided a secure and loving environment in which they are able to grow emotionally, physically, socially and intellectually. My longing is to help each and every one of my students explore their creativity, understand their emotions and learn self-regulation along with social skills and the best of academics that I can possibly provide. The role I have as an educator is to guide my students while allowing them to explore their curiosities about the world around them and academics to blossom while teaching respect and caring for others.

Children by nature, are curious and inquisitive. Engaging children in science, along with identifying their understanding and inquiry skills is a vital skill required by educators. Educators who provide children with rich and engaging science exploration, play and investigation during their early years of development are bestowing children with the knowledge and understanding of science and improving their cognitive development (Campbell, Jobling & Howitt, 2015). To engage children in science is best done by finding a child’s interest and expanding on it. The child in the following case study (parent permission, appendix 1) has displayed interest in the outdoors and with experimenting with change. During the science inquiry activity, we investigated Chemical science, identifying how materials can be combined to create a chemical reaction and a different substance using sand and kitchen items. The experiment consists of changing the composition of sand to make a new substance that has different physical and chemical properties (Aitken, Hunt, Roy & Sajfar, 2012)

Children, even at early ages, construct explanations for how the natural world works based on their daily observations of nature and the information they are exposed in their culture. (Saçkes, 2015) Since most of causal explanations from children are irrelevant to scientific explanations and even hinder the learning process of scientific concepts, Saçkes conducts a descriptive research with 46 kindergartners to investigate their “mental models” of the day and night cycle to realize what restrains children’s minds, and what educators can learn from analyzing their “mental models”.

This assignment is a case study of a child’s engagement, inquiry skills and understanding of physical or chemical understandings. There are two parts to the assignment that build to the final case study report. Part A is to design a science inquiry activity suitable for engaging a child at junior primary with physical or chemical science understandings that uses materials like water, sand, ball or tubes. At the next, it is needed to figure out how the planned inquiry activity links to the Australian Curriculum and the early Years Learning Framework. This report also needs to explain and justify the learning theory that underpins the activity and the proposed teaching and learning approach. At the last

In their study, they note that other research has led to varying conclusions of children’s understanding of the earth – this being, that some studies show that children “…construct their own non-scientific theories...” (pg. 432) and others indicate that many have some scientific understanding of the earth, but their knowledge lacks coherence. Similar to the previous research, Frède et al. (2011) tested with the different question types (open and forced-choice), and had a form of representations of the earth (2D pictures or 3D models), to examine how they would have an influence on the answers (scientific or non-scientific) given by children (pg. 435). Their results showed that similar to previous research, the forced-choice questions produced higher proportions of scientific answers from children than the open

Please accept the attached résumé as my application for the position of Early Childhood Educator. I consider myself an excellent candidate for the following reasons: I am a cooperative, creative and energetic individual who is knowledgeable in the field of child development and inclusive program planning. It is my personal philosophy that children learn best in nurturing environments where they are able to explore and learn through carefully planned or spontaneous play-based learning experiences.

Students are considered to be scientists in the inquiry process. Children will view themselves as scientists as they learn. They look forward to science, demonstrate a desire to learn more, seek collaboration with their classmates, they are confident in doing science, and willing to take risks. Students are readily engaged in exploring science. They have curiosity, ponder observations, move around to get the materials they need, and have the opportunity to try out their ideas. Students are able to communicate using various amounts of methods. They express their ideas in journals, reporting, or drawing. They listen, speak, and write about science. They communicate their level of understanding of concepts and ideas. The students propose explanations and solutions based off their data. They use investigations to satisfy their own questions. They sort out information that is needed and important. They become willing to revise explanations and gain new knowledge. They raise questions, use questions to lead them to investigations, and students begin to enjoy using questions to ponder ideas. Students begin to observe rather than look. They see details, detect sequences, and notice change, similarities, and differences. The students begin to make

The origin and improvement of scientific knowledge can be discovered by investigating children’s understanding of the earth. (Panagiotaki, et al, 2006) By interpreting everyday experience, children initially believe that the earth is a flat object. Some think that our earth is flat and rectangular while others assume that it is flat and shaped like a disc. Then, during the process of knowledge acquirement, children are exposed to the socially accepted knowledge that the Earth is spherical. Nonetheless, because of the influence of intuitive constraints, they make an attempt to constantly review presuppositions in order to adjust their original models to enable them to be more consistent with the more logical models, thus forming synthetic

The origins and improvement of scientific knowledge can be discovered by investigating children’s understanding of the earth. (Panagiotaki, et al, 2006) This report will focus on how children respond to the shape of the Earth, which is an analysis and partly replication of the result of the experiment done by Vosniadou & Brewer in 1992. According to their research, by interpreting everyday experience, children initially believe that the earth is a flat object. Some think that our earth is flat and rectangular while others assume that it is flat and shaped like a disc. Then, during the process of knowledge acquirement, children are exposed to the socially accepted knowledge that the Earth is spherical. Nonetheless, because of the influence

Science is, by its nature, inquiry based and science knowledge is built through processes in which discoveries of the natural world are made (Abruscato, 2000). It utilizes discovery and scientific thinking process to explore and learn knowledge and skills. Learning by doing is the new efficient method in teaching science. For kindergarten, this method leads to better understanding of science concepts and builds skills that children will use in future life .What a child can do with assistance now, they can later do on their own (Vygotsky, 1978). John Dewey (1916) stated that children must be engaged in an active quest for learning and new ideas. Inquiry is important in educating kindergarteners because it not only keeps them interested in lessons but also helps them retain more information when performing exploration and investigation. Children are naturally motivated to learn and actively seek out information to help their understanding (Piaget, 1950).The success of students who participate in hands- on inquiry activities suggests that if students have first hands experience with science, concepts are easier to understand and apply and students are generally more favorable to science and have better understanding of the nature of science .Within a conceptual framework, inquiry learning and active learner involvement can lead to important outcomes in the classroom. In kindergarten, students who are actively making observations, collecting results and drawing