Early Childhood Education Video Analysis

In my first semester of college at Concordia, I had the opportunity to have the class EDU 120. A requirement for this class was having 10 hours of fieldwork; at least 3 hours in each level of childhood. The reason for this requirement is to help the students discover what grade level they want to teach in the future.

Timothy Rasinski and Nancy Padak, in their article, “Write Soon!” from The Reading Teacher (2009) emphasize that reading and writing are important skills and explain how parents can easily incorporate them into everyday life. They support this idea by presenting simple ways that parents and their children can do this, such as writing notes to each other, exchanging journals, or making lists. The authors wrote this article in order to help teachers guide parents through developing and supporting their child’s literacy. Rasinski and Padak’s writing is aimed toward teachers who can ultimately use these instructions to encourage

Did you know that play expands a child’s learning and development? Once parents understand that play is crucial in their child’s life then they can begin to help their son or daughter be the best he or she can be. According to Lev Vygotsky “play shapes how children make sense of their worlds, how they learn thinking skills, and how they acquire language.” After spending time at the Bombeck Center I learned that children play in many diverse ways, thus learning numerous new things within each center in which they interact. Lev Vygotsky along with Jean Piaget researched the need for guided social interaction as well as the necessity for spontaneous, self-discovered learning. The Bombeck Center focuses on a play-based learning curriculum to ensure a child’s ability to access social interactions and self-discoveries at the tip of their fingers.

“Early roots of play as a best practice for early learning was documented by Plato, a Greek philosopher, who insisted that play is considered a natural activity of childhood.”(Ingrid Crowther, 2011, Pg. 2) Early Childhood Education is a term that refers to educational programs that are devoted to children from birth to the age of eight. “Children of this age learn by exploring and investigating; therefore, their environment should support and encourage this process.”(Rebecca Isbell and Betty Exelby, 2001, Pg. 11) Early childhood environments should be attractive and exciting. These environments should allow children to work and play using proper resources, materials, and tools.

Writing is an essential tool and has been noted as a precursor for great speaking by teachers at all grade levels. However, with writing being an important aspect throughout one’s academic career and beyond, it is one of the most tedious tasks to teach. It sounds like a cliché, but in order to get better at something, one has to keep completing the task and each time, accomplish something different while maintaining prior knowledge. There are various ways that enhance a student’s writing abilities and the focus of these research strategies will prove that encouraging students to write enhances writing.

[ ] In order to build on the children’s understanding and content knowledge, lesson one’s purpose is to engage the children through making a prediction based on the text, pictures, and title. Lesson two builds on the language and literacy by continuing with using the mentor text, “Fancy Nancy” and using the rich academic language associated with the central focus of predictions. For example, each lesson has a distinct objective in which the activities are built on but all three lessons build on each other by incorporating similar academic language and literacy. The children start out in a whole group setting and are actively engaged through discussions and sharing activities. The children are then scaffolded into independent reading and activities to assess their understanding of the content objectives. They then use their prior knowledge and rich vocabulary to successfully complete the objective of each lesson through verbal discussions, independent work, and physical movement. In lesson one, the children are actively engaged through participating in a gallery walk. This gallery walk is done with the children’s table groups and encourages community and social interactions. During this activity, the children will work together to activate their prior knowledge of predictions and record through writing what they

“Play is developmentally appropriate for primary-age children and can provide them with opportunities that enrich the learning experience” (Copple & Bredekamp 2009). Early childhood education holds two main focuses; a child-based focus and a family-based focus. Early childhood education has positive outcomes on the child through their learning experiences, and their growth and development. Based on the family, the results of early education happen through the communication that the family has with the educators and by the encouragement they get from within themselves, and also from the educators.

The terms “play”, “learn” and “teach” are commonly used in the early childhood sector. This essay attempts to define and interconnect these terms to produce a holistic understanding of how play can be used as a medium to help children learn.

Therefore emphasis on the Reggio Emilia approach is placed upon children’s many ‘symbolic languages’; these languages help the child explore and being to develop their own view of the world. These languages are based on: drawing, sculpting, dramatic play and writing, in order to achieve the best in a child and basing activities on aspects of: creative thinking, exploration and discovery, free play, following the interests on the child, valuing and encouraging all ways children express themselves, allowing children to talk about their ideas and then to re-visit them. A child’s environment has always been considered important in their learning and features in the Reggio Emilia approach; this philosophy claims that a child’s environment is known as a ‘third teacher’ as children must be able to learn through their experiences of senses: touching, moving, listening, seeing and hearing; which all

Reggio Emilia is a child driven methodology where children are enriched within their environment as well as communication from their peers. Reggio Emilia schooling is an innovative approach for preschoolers and kindergarteners. Teachers are considered co learners with the children. The classroom environment is considered a “third teacher” while the children are seen as obtaining a “hundred languages”. Reggio Emilia schooling can be viewed as an out of the box and unorganized approach to learning due to excluding a written curriculum. Reggio Emilia has been viewed as highly unstructured with a high chance of bullying to develop. Reggio Emilia is an unconventional way of providing students with a manipulative environment including co-learners

Literacy is important for young children. It’s so much a child has to know before entering kindergarten. The Essentials of Early Literacy Instruction stressed the importance of teaching literacy. Early literacy is an emerging g set of relationships between reading and writing. Today a lot of terms have been referred to for literacy development for preschoolers the term that’s mostly used is early literacy. The term was chosen because the earliest forms of literacy development are forming reading and writing concepts. Linking early literacy to play is the most effective way to for young children to learn. There are many ways educators can teach literacy activities such as rich teacher talk, storybook reading, phonologic awareness activities, alphabet activities, support for emergent writing, shared book experience, integrated, and content-focused activities, Young children understand print by oral and written language. Asking students to help read a book and turn the page help them understand the basics of a book. There are at least three critical content categories in early literacy: oral language comprehension, phonological awareness, and print knowledge. Children need to learn phonological awareness, alphabet letter knowledge, the function of written language, a sense of meaning making texts, and vocabulary. Alphabetic writing is quite difficult once children understand the language of their community they learn which words stand for which concepts in that language.

Play is inevitable when it comes to children. Given the right environment and objects (of any sort), children will find a way to play. Jarvis, et al state that educators must offer inspiring, playful environments which include hands-on activities and interesting resources. This will empower children to educate themselves (2009). Along the same line, Wood and Attfield consider that an environment inclusive of varied resources will provide room for growth in their learning and will support the child’s “creativity, inventiveness and originally” (2005, p.231).

2012). The environment and classroom space are separated into ten center areas that help enhance hands on activities with learning materials and manipulatives. These centers include: blocks, dramatic play, toys and games, art, sand and water tables, library (reading center), discovery (science), music and movement, cooking, and outdoor activities. Activity areas are designed to support the specific learning objectives. Similar to Reggio Emilia’s approach teachers assess the students learning and base curriculum off their interests and pace. The creative curriculum approach measures incremental progress to communicate the child’s growth through benchmarks through the learning objectives.

“We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by listening to words, but in virtue of experiences in which the child acts on his environment. The teacher 's task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child.”

Learning how to first write, I believe, for kids is always fascinating, because it is something new to them. Starting out is simple, such as writing letters of the alphabet and slowly progressing into writing words, sentences, paragraphs, and whole papers. Even though I was a creative kid, through the years of elementary school it began to become tougher. I ran into obstacles when I was told to write a comic strip, a short story, and a paper about ourselves. Not being able to write what was coming to my mind in a manner that made sense frustrated me. Throughout elementary school I struggled with writing because I never figured out how to fix this problem. During these years I succeeded in reading and I would soon hope to in writing.