Pre-K Curriculum and Instruction

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Pre-K Curriculum and Instruction

• Patricia H. Ging, EdD
• Associate Professor of Education
• Tennessee Wesleyan College
• 423.746.5237

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Pre-K

• "The stronger the start, the better the finish."
• Those words, Secretary of Education Richard Riley
  says, should be our motto for early childhood
  education.
• http//www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr256.shtm
  l
• Education World 8/10/2000

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Curriculum and Instruction

• Covers a wide range of areas
• General Instruction and Specific Subjects

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Curriculum and Instruction

• Teachers of young children must know
• What to teach
• When to teach
• How to teach

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Curriculum and Instruction

• Education should interconnect concepts across the
  curriculum

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Curriculum and Instruction

• Learning involves knowledge of the subject as
  well as understanding the process
• The teacher should have a strong understanding of
  detailed material as well as the processes of
  child development

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General Instruction

• The curriculum process
• Structuring a curriculum
• Implementing a curriculum
• Revising or modifying a curriculum
• No Common Core Standards
• Aligning a curriculum to reflect state standards
• http//www.state.tn.us/education/ci/earlychildhood
  /index.shtml

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Teacher Evaluation

• I Can Statements
• Who can count to ten?
• I can count to ten!

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General Instruction

• How routines and transitions reflect a young
  childs needs
• Balance
• Order
• Depth
• Variety
• Structure
• Challenge
• Physical Activity

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General Instruction

• Instructional strategies
• Play
• Small groups
• Cooperative learning
• Inquiry
• Discovery learning
• Learning centers
• Teacher-directed learning
• Theme
• Directed reading

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General Instruction

• Major theories and models of programmed
  instruction
• Constructivism
• Montessori
• Project approach
• High/Scope
• Reggio Emilia

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General Information

• What is meant by constructivism? The term refers
  to the idea that learners construct knowledge for
  themselves---each learner individually (and
  socially) constructs meaning---as he or she
  learns. Constructing meaning is learning there
  is no other kind. The dramatic consequences of
  this view are twofold
• 1) we have to focus on the learner in thinking
  about learning (not on the subject/lesson to be
  taught)
• 2) There is no knowledge independent of the
  meaning attributed to experience (constructed) by
  the learner, or community of learners.
• Dewey, Piaget and Vigotsky

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General Instruction

• Montessori classroom
• It is necessary for the teacher to guide the
  child without letting him feel her presence too
  much, so that she may always be ready to supply
  the desired help, but may never be the obstacle
  between the child and his experience.
• Dr. Maria Montessori

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General Information

• What is a Project?A project is an in-depth
  investigation of a topic undertaken by a class, a
  group of children, or an individual child in an
  early childhood classroom or at home.

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General Information

• High/Scope uses an active learning approach to
  educating children, imparting skills that will
  support their development through school and into
  young adulthood. It uses an open educational
  framework that provides teachers and caregivers
  with a blueprint for daily routine, classroom and
  playground organization, teacher-child
  interaction, and teacher-child assessment that
  encourages independent thinking, initiative, and
  creativity.

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PROGRAM BACKGROUND

• In 1962, the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program
  was initiated in Ypsilanti, MI, as a small,
  carefully designed research and curriculum
  development project to help low-income, at-risk
  children in the community gain a positive start
  at education and life through a high-quality
  preschool program. The High/Scope approach blends
  the knowledge of Jean Piaget, a Swiss
  psychologist who studied learning and development
  patterns of infants and children, with practical
  teaching experience in the classroom and other
  educational settings. Long-term studies show the
  High/Scope approach promotes the healthy
  development of children and provides long-lasting
  benefits throughout adulthood.

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General Instruction

• REGGIO EMILIA APPROCH TO TEACHING
• The following information is extracted from
  Carnegie Mellon Cyert Center for Early
  Education.
• "The curriculum is not child centered or teacher
  directed. The curriculum is child originated and
  teacher framed...We have given great care in
  selecting the term 'negotiated curriculum'
  instead of emergent or child centered curriculum.
  We propose that 'negotiated curriculum' better
  captures the constructive, continual and
  reciprocal relation among teachers, children and
  parents and better captures the negotiations
  among subject matter representational media and
  the children's current knowledge."  Innovations
  in Early Education The International Reggio
  Exchange, vol. 3, no.

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The following overview of the Reggio Emilia
Approach was taken from a packet of information
available at The Hundred Languages of Children
traveling exhibit

• Hailed as an exemplary model of early childhood
  education (Newsweek, 1991), the Reggio Emilia
  approach to education is committed to the
  creation of conditions for learning that will
  enhance and facilitate children's construction of
  "his or her own powers of thinking through the
  synthesis of all the expressive, communicative
  and cognitive languages" (Edwards and Forman,
  1993). The Reggio Emilia approach to early
  childhood education is a city-run and sponsored
  system designed for all children from birth
  through six years of age. The Reggio Emilia
  approach can be viewed as a resource and
  inspiration to help educators, parents, and
  children as they work together to further develop
  their own educational programs.

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General Instruction

• Curriculum integration as it relates to
  instruction
• Cognitive tasks demanded from a lesson, teaching
  practice, or questioning technique

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General Instruction

• How to elicit and encourage in-depth responses
  and metacognitive thinking from children at
  age-appropriate levels
• Techniques for creating effective bridges between
  curriculum goals and students previous
  experiences (or lack of previous experiences)

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Sample Praxis Questions

• Design a series of literacy lessons for early
  childhood education and indicate the state
  standards for which the lessons have been
  aligned.
• Develop activities that involve a variety of
  instructional strategies and focus on one
  learning concept (e.g., how play, inquiry, and
  learning centers could be used to teach number
  concepts to 4-year-old children).

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Sample Praxis Questions

• Design a learning activity that incorporates
  science, mathematics, and literacy. Indicate
  which areas of the curriculum will be integrated
  into the lesson.
• What would be some appropriate questions that
  would elicit in-depth responses and encourage
  children to focus on their thinking strategies?
  What would be inappropriate questions for young
  children?

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Mathematics and Numeracy

• Developmentally appropriate practices in lessons
  based on mathematical concepts
• Design
• Implementation
• Evaluation

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Mathematics and Numeracy

• Mathematical concepts
• Estimation
• Geometry
• Number sense and numeration
• Whole-number operations

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Sample Praxis Questions

• Design a lesson for 5-year-old children that will
  introduce basic geometrical concepts. What
  instructional strategies would you use? How would
  you evaluate the effectiveness of your lesson?
• Identify a state standard for each of the
  following mathematical concepts estimation,
  geometry, number sense and numeration, and
  whole-number operations.

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Literacy

• Developmentally appropriate practice in lessons
  that promote oral language expression and
  literacy in children
• Design
• Implementation
• Evaluation

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Literacy

• Importance of providing children with a
  literacy-rich environment
• Printed material
• As source of information
• For pleasure or recreation
• As a means of recording or communicating

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Literacy

• Availability of reading, writing, and listening
  materials, computers, printers, and audiovisual
  equipment

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Literacy

• Specific literacy concepts
• Writing process
• Phonemic awareness
• Sentence decoding
• Word families
• Root words
• Phonics

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Literacy

• Characteristics of quality childrens books
• Balanced collections that reflect a wide variety
  of genres and reflect the makeup of the community
• Books that have strong story lines,
  age-appropriate themes, illustrations, and/or
  read-aloud possibilities

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Literacy

• Specific literacy teaching strategies
• Grapheme-phoneme correspondence
• Journal writing
• Shared reading
• Cueing systems
• Rubrics
• Reflective logs

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Sample Praxis Questions

• Describe a literacy-rich environment for young
  children. Explain how the components of the
  environment will foster literacy concepts.
• Identify each of the following literacy teaching
  strategies and how each strategy could be used to
  help a student for whom English is a second
  language grapheme-phoneme correspondence,
  journal writing, shared reading, cueing system,
  rubrics, and reflective logs.

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Sample Praxis Questions

• How do phonemic awareness, sentence decoding,
  word families, root words, and phonics support
  literacy development? Identify each of these
  specific literacy concepts and the role each
  plays in literacy development.
• Design a unit that incorporates the writing
  process into daily activities. Specify each stage
  of the writing process within the unit.

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Science

• Developmentally appropriate practice in lessons
  that develop each childs innate curiosity about
  the world and broaden each childs procedural and
  thinking skills for investigating the world,
  solving problems, and making decisions
• Design
• Implementation
• evaluation

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Science

• General principles of scientific inquiry
• Cause and effect
• Systems
• Scale
• Models
• Change
• Variations
• Structure and function

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Pre-K Standards

• http//Pre-K Standards

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Sample Praxis Questions

• Choose a grade level and design an Earth science
  unit that identifies goals, state standards,
  activities, and evaluation.
• Think about ways in which the principles of
  scientific inquiry can be employed for developing
  a childs innate curiosity about the world, for
  broadening a childs procedural and thinking
  skills for investigating the world, solving
  problems, and making decisions.

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Social Studies and Character Inquiry

• Developmentally appropriate practice in learning
  experiences that promote cultural and character
  education
• Design
• Implementation
• Evaluation

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Social Studies and Character Inquiry

• Ability to design, implement, and evaluate
  lessons that develop the social studies
  disciplines
• History
• Geography
• Economics

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Sample Praxis Questions

• Design an activity that promotes cultural and
  character education. Include extension activities
  and evaluation procedures.
• Develop an activity that would involve multiple
  social studies disciplines (e.g., history,
  geography, and economics).

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Creative Arts andAesthetics

• Developmentally appropriate practice in visual
  and performing arts lessons that engage and
  broaden each childs experiences and skills
• Design
• Implementation
• Evaluation
• Video

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Creative Arts andAesthetics

• Ability to integrate the arts into content area
  studies
• Appropriate responses
• to childrens work

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Creative Arts andAesthetics

• Incorporating Art into Daily Routines
• In the classroom
• Potted plants - Various leaf colors, shapes, and
  blooming schedules
• Some children may notice and remark about the
  diversity in the beauty
• Others will likely do so with some teacher
  assistance

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Creative Arts andAesthetics

• A Unique and Wonderful Area
• Use a low table and an attractive tablecloth for
  displaying interesting objects
• Shell collections, cut flowers in vases, rocks in
  various sizes and textures
• Change regularly to increase the childrens
  curiosity
• Children can be encouraged to bring in wonderful
  objects for the showcase

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Creative Arts andAesthetics

• Creative Experiences
• After a storm, the children can collect branches
  or other items from the playground
• Use these items in art projects or in the
  Wonderful Showcase Area

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Creative Arts andAesthetics

• White Board
• Children can be assigned to decorate a portion of
  the white board. This could be a designated daily
  task

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Sample Praxis Questions

• Design a learning activity for visual and
  performing arts that would be appropriate for a
  5-year-old child. Identify the learning goal for
  this activity and the means for evaluating the
  success of this goal.
• How can creative arts and aesthetics be used to
  enhance learning in other content areas?

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Sample Praxis Questions

• Develop a unit that integrates the arts into
  content area studies. Include activities that
  integrate the arts with mathematics, literacy,
  science, and social studies.
• What is the value of creative arts and aesthetics
  in education?

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Sample Praxis Questions

• Should creative arts and aesthetics be integrated
  with content area studies? Identify several ways
  in which creative arts and aesthetics enhance
  learning. Are there times when creative arts and
  aesthetics might hinder learning?

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Physical Education and Health

• Developmentally appropriate practice in the
  content discipline designed to strengthen gross
  and fine motor skills and foster a healthy
  lifestyle.
• Safety procedure and
• precautions.
• Video

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Physical Education and Health

• Impact of medical conditions and procedures to
  handle such conditions
• Epilepsy
• Diabetes
• Use of injectable medications to prevent allergic
  reactions
• Handling of blood

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Sample Praxis Questions

• What are some activities that could be conducted
  in physical education sessions to strengthen a
  5-year-old students fine motor skills
• What is the relationship between gross and fine
  motor skill development?
• What safety information should be conveyed to
  teachers?

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Sample Praxis Questions

• Design a unit on gross motor skills for
  6-year-old students. What safety procedures and
  precautions should be considered in developing
  this unit?
• What safety information should be shared with
  students to ensure their safety and understanding
  of medical conditions?

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Sample Praxis Questions

• Outline the important points that would need to
  be discussed during an in-service workshop on the
  impact of medical conditions and the procedures
  for handling such conditions. Include information
  concerning epilepsy, diabetes, use of an EpiPen
  for severe allergies, and handling of blood.

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Technology

• Appropriate use of technology in the early
  childhood classroom
• How to adapt technology for use with students
  with special needs
• Ability to evaluate
• effective use of
• technology in the
• early childhood classroom

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Sample Praxis Questions

• Describe an early childhood classroom that
  provides students with a variety of opportunities
  to interact with technology. Include one activity
  for each form of technology specifically
  indicating the form of technology and how
  technology will enhance learning for the student.

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Sample Praxis Questions

• How can technology be adapted for use with
  students with special needs? Indicate adaptations
  for physical, emotional, and educational needs

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Sample Praxis Questions

• Develop a unit that will incorporate technology
  with literacy. Indicate specific activities that
  will enhance literacy learning. Develop
  assessment tools that will evaluate the effective
  use of technology to attain the specified goals.

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Conclusion

• Discussion
• Questions

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References

• http//www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr256.shtm
  l
• Education World 8/10/2000 (Study Guide for the
  Praxis Education of Young Children Tests)