Practicum Experience

There are many different theories of development that help us to understand children’s behaviour, reactions and ways of learning. All equally important as they influence practice. To begin with there is Piaget’s constructivist theories which look at the way in which children seem to be able to make sense of their world as a result of their experiences and how they are active learners. He also suggested that as children develop so does their thinking. Piaget’s work has influenced early years settings into providing more hands on and relevant tasks for children and young people. In other words the children are ‘learning through play’. Teachers are working out the needs of children and plan activities accordingly.

Piaget developed a workable theory that has had considerable implications for education, most notably for child-centred learning methods in nursery and infant schools. Piaget argued that young children think quite differently from adults so therefore the teacher should adapt the teaching methods to suit the child. For example, nursery school classrooms can provide children with play materials that encourage their learning. Using sets of toys that encourage the practice of sorting, grading and counting. Play areas, where children can develop role-taking skills through imaginative play. Materials like water, sand, bricks and crayons that help children make their own constructions and create symbolic representations of objects and people in their lives. A teacher’s role is to create the conditions in which learning may best take place.

My practicum was a good learning experience of practical public health work and exposure to how zoonotic disease is handled by multiple public health departments. I appreciated my experience giving me the knowledge of day-to-day public health work and what it means to be epidemiologist. My classes in epidemiology prepared me well for understanding terminology and the process of outbreak response. Particularly, my Applied Epidemiology course provided me with the critical thinking skills to evaluate published literature. In reviewing my work I used multiple public health competencies including biostatistics, epidemiology, communication and informatics, leadership, professionalism, and program planning.

The preschool is concerned with the child at different developmental stages (Berger, 2009). Teacher must ask herself two questions about the child at those stages. Firstly, how does the child think about and view his world? Secondly, what learning tasks should the child be given at this point in his development? To answer the questions, the teacher must orient herself to Piagetian developmental theory and sharpen her observational skills.

Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, made substantial findings in intellectual development. His Cognitive Theory influenced both the fields of education and psychology. Piaget identified four major periods of cognitive development: the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operations stage, and the stage of formal operations. The preoperational stage includes children two to four years of age and is characterized by the development and refinement of schemes for symbolic representation. During the preoperational stage lies, what Piaget coined, the intuitive period. This phase occurs during the ages of 4-7 and during this time, the child’s thinking is largely centered on the way things appear to be rather than on

In order to create play, they must represent these activities mentally and translate them into actions. While the thinking of preoperational children is more advanced, Piaget emphasizes that children at this stage of cognitive development are still immature and are limited by egocentrism. They are all about self and perceive the world based on their own assumptions and experiences, they have difficulty relating to differences such as lighter, smaller, and softer.

Piaget believe that children are active thinkers. He recognized that the mind develops through a series of irreversible stages. He also acknowledged that a child’s maturing brain builds schemas that are constantly assimilating and accommodating to the world around them. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is split into four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. The sensorimotor stage occurs from birth to nearly two years of age. At this stage, infants learn about the world around them by sensing it and interacting within it. It is also in this stage that the idea of object permanence develops, that is, the awareness that things continue to exist even when they are not being observed. In my personal life, I am certain that in this stage of development I would have enjoyed peek-a-boo, because if I didn’t see it, to my developing mind, it wasn’t there at all. The second stage, preoperational, lasts from two years of age to seven years of

The first challenge I have already experienced in this practicum process is to define the project, since I was thinking about a project that would require more than the 4-8 weeks that we will have for the actual practicum experience. I think this could have been anticipated if since the beginning I had thought about every aspect that would be involved in my practicum, all of the stakeholders, the location, the time, and my resources from the beginning. But now that I have a more defined plan and a specific location, I am able to have a better idea of my plan, of the challenges I will face and of the assistance I will get through the partnership with CFHI.

For me I didn’t have much of a practicum experience. I did my practicum at Westside Elementary and the majority of what I was able to do was observe what was happening in the Resource classroom. I had very few opportunity to actually help and work with students one-on-one. The teacher I did my hours with was so organized and always prepared and the students were actually very good at doing what they needed to be doing that it left me with nothing to do other than to observe the majority of the days I went in.

Overall, I enjoyed practicum and having the opportunity to gain more experience working with children. I also enjoyed getting to practice what we learned the week before every Monday when I went into practicum because I tried to incorporate or carry out what guidance strategy we learned about the next time I went in to practicum to really ingrain the strategy in my head. I also enjoyed how I got feedback throughout the semester from the Lab School Teacher’s because when I did practicum in HDFS 224 I barely got any feedback besides at the end of the semester. One thing that kind of surprised me was that in practicum I communicated effectively with quiet children well. It surprised me because to me I think it is easier to communicate and interact

Clinical training is considered as an indispensable part of professional nursing education. The evaluation of clinical competence is an integrated form of evaluation seeking to combine knowledge, understanding, problem solving, technical skills, attitudes, and ethics in evaluation (Rafiee, Moattari, Nikbakht, Kojuri, & Mousavinasab, 2014)

In the first, or sensorimotor, stage (birth to two years), knowledge is gained primarily through sensory impressions and motor activity. Through these two modes of learning, experienced both separately and in combination, infants gradually learn to control their own bodies and objects in the external world. Toward the end of Piaget¡¦s career, he brought about the idea that action is actually the primary source of knowledge and that perception and language are more secondary roles. He claimed that action is not random, but has organization, as well as logic. Infants from birth to four months however, are incapable of thought and are unable to differentiate themselves from others or from the environment. To infants, objects only exist when they are insight

In the sensorimotor stage the child discovers the environment through physical actions such as sucking, grabbing, shaking and pushing. During these first two years of life children realize objects still exist, even if it is out of view. This concept is known as object permanence. Children in the preoperational stage develop language skills, but may only grasp an idea with repeated exposure. As Piaget describes in the next stage, children draw on knowledge that is based on real life situations to provide more logical explanations and predictions. Lastly, in the formal operational stage children use higher levels of thinking and present abstract ideas.

Evidence based instruction is a collection of practices that have been tested and show a record of success and improvement. Evidence based instruction is based on information that is reliable and with verifiable as well as valid evidence that shows when this practice or program is implemented, there is a moderate to substantial chance that students will make strides in achievement. Research based means that there has been researched, but does not definitely imply success or achievement.

The first stage of Piaget’s development theory is the sensorimotor stage which takes place in children most commonly 0 to 2 years old. In this stage, thought is developed through direct physical interactions with the environment. Three major cognitive leaps in this stage are the development of early schemes, the development of goal-oriented behavior, and the development of object permanence. During the early stages, infants are only aware of what is immediately in front of them. They focus on what they