The first principle holistic learning and development illustrates that all learning and development interacts with and is dependent on each other and that children don’t learn in isolation. When children acquire a new skill learning incorporates more than one area of development (Hayes, 2005; NCCA, 2009). Holistic learning and development instils curiosity and motivates children to learn. To support a child’s holistic learning one must provide a meaningful play environment that builds on children’s strengths and experiences. Central to this principle is the significance of observing and interacting with the child and intervening when appropriate to extend children’s learning and help them to make connections (DCCC, 2012).
The second principle
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The benefits of an emergent curriculum are as follows:
1. The emergent curriculum is responsive to children’s needs and draws on their strengths and interests. Children have an opportunity to focus on a topic that interests them; this helps them to construct knowledge at a deeper level and develop a love of learning (Jones, 2012).
2. The emergent curriculum acknowledges each child’s individuality and empowers them to become part of the planning process. This participation in planning gives children a voice, it shows children that their opinion is valued and enables them to take ownership of their own learning (Kashin, 2011).
3. Children’s individual learning style and abilities are supported by the emergent curriculum. Providing children with an opportunity to work at their own pace and choose what and who they want to play with will encourage them to be curious and help them to feel a sense of achievement when they direct their own learning (CECDE,
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The Physical Environment is critical to ensuring participation of a child with SEN. For a child with a physical disability the environment must be clutter free, organised and promote independence. It is important that the child can work in all areas and that materials are easily accessible (MIC, 2017 6.2). Furniture may need to be moved or adjusted. For example, the height of the water tray may need to be adjusted for a child who uses wheelchair to ensure they can fully participate.
2. Materials that are offered should allow for lots of sensory and exploratory play. Real-life and open-ended materials can allow for hands-on exploration, this is particularly important for a child who has a visual impairment. To ensure materials are easily accessible for a child with a visual impairment an object can be stuck on the outside of each box so the child can feel the items that are contained within. This will assist the child to be active and make choices about their own
Besides a dreamer, I am also a Registered Early Childhood Educator (RECE), and for the past ten years I have worked at a daycare with an emergent curriculum, primarily in the kindergarten and school age programs. Like constructivism, the emergent curriculum is based on the theories of Jean Piaget, John Dewey, and Lev Vygotsky. Teachers plan the programming around children’s interests, record the outcomes, analyze the results, and then plan more programming around these new interests. I may currently be an RECE, but teaching in an elementary school is always something I have wanted to do from a very young age. I was extremely lucky to have many teachers whose love of being an educator was so palpable that it inspired me to do the same for a future generation. It is why I am currently at the University of Windsor getting my degree in psychology. After receiving my degree, I plan on applying to teacher’s college.
An Article by Dr. Leong and Dr. Bodrova (2016) stated that play is beneficial to children’s learning especially when it reaches a certain degree of complexity. When they engage in play activities most of their early years, they learn to delay gratification and to prioritize their goals and actions. They also learn to consider the perspectives and needs of other people and to represent things significantly to regulate their behavior and actions in a cautious, intentional way.
My desire for children in my care is that their learning journey would be meaningful as they explore the ideas and activities they are interested in. This means that I believe that children are naturally motivated learners and should have the opportunity to learn through their own explorations and through collaboration with other children and educators. I believe this can be done through both teacher-initiated and child-initiated activities and supported through play. I also believe that play is a natural and enjoyable means through which children learn. In my practice I aim to encourage children’s natural ...
A colleague of Jones and herself wrote a book over investigation of early childhood curriculum. The Reggio Emilia preschool had been created in the 1960s by Loris Malaguzzi and had become a world-renowned model of the documentation of children’s active learning at play and work and an emergent curriculum built on the strengths of the child by the 1990s. Like the Reggio educators, they collected stories of emergent curriculum in practice where ever they traveled as consultants working with teachers in the classroom. The goal of emergent curriculum is to respond to every child’s interests and it is suppose to be open-ended and self-directed. It depends on the teacher’s
Children are our inspiration. They are the reason that educators today need to be more than sufficient in teaching, but remarkable at teaching. Children are little sponges that absorb knowledge quickly and abundantly and with guidance, can achieve great goals in their academic life. Children are the future. As teachers, we need to educate ourselves as much as possible so that we can better educate the future generations. “Piaget, working with children, found that the growth of their ideas is a process spread over years,” (Sawyer, 2003, p.6). Teachers, families and communities must support one another in learning and educating our young children. If we don’t spend the time necessary to learn and broaden our knowledge, our children suffer, our future suffers.
Educators need to understand the importance of fundamental concepts like permanence of objects. Educators are therefore able to respond by planning activities that are suitable for each child going through each developmental stage. Knowing what experiences are best for each developmental stage will help children get the best out of life. Educators need to provide not just one but a whole range experiences if they want to build a secure foundation for future learning. By giving children fun, hands on experiences they learn and practise new skills that they can they develop and become more complex over time. An example of this is by giving a young child building blocks, not only will he be having fun while creating his own structures but he will also learn problem solving skills, increase his imagination, measuring skills, developing solutions and reasoning skills, balance and spatial body awareness just to name a few.
Carolina Rinaldi (2001), suggests the approach sees the child as one who experiences and feels a part of the world, who is full of curiosity and a desire to live and communicate from the start of their life. For a future educator, it is imperative that the child’s multiple ways of learning are respected and appreciated for the child’s curiosities to foster into a deep love of learning. The teacher must become a guide and a co-constructer of learning that tailors the learning environment to the child.
For example one of the child in our class due to lack of his hearing impairment as well as “English” language challenge uses his art activity to express is capability of himself with play dough. Sometimes, he makes different types of animals, cars etc. This is related in journal article of Creating Inclusive classrooms through the Art that state “Even if environments and programs are designed to facilitate access, some children will need additional individualized accommodations and supports to participate fully in play and learning activities with peers and adults”( Henderson, C. M., & Lasley, E. (2009,p.2). Similarly, more visuals, lots of pictures and graphic organizers for children with hearing impairment create that feeling of excitement in children. There is need to label every objects in the classroom to improve their language
...preschool years they will learn to initiate and carry out tasks based on experience or exposure to those tasks. Interactions with parents, teachers, peers, and other adults are important in a child's life. These relationships actually shape the brain and lay the foundation for later developmental outcomes, from academic performance to mental health and interpersonal skills.
...ng in the educational context requires teachers as the competent adults or instructors, it demonstrates the importance of teacher presence in all areas of the curriculum especially in play. Whether through Piaget’s cognitive constructivism or Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, it is important for teachers to actively participate and interact with the children to foster their cognitive and social development. To scaffold children’s play, the teacher is important in roles such as creating the right play environment by preparing adequate materials, designing the playing space and ensuring adequate play materials, designing appropriate play experiences to structure and facilitate the children’s development and facilitating interactions among the children and between themselves and the children to facilitate and support meaning making (Module 2 & Module 3, 2012).
For Vygotsky, children are seen as active beings on their development through social interactions with parents, teachers, and other adults, as well as by participating in their cultural activities. The interactions they have with other individuals and their culture opens their minds to new information and helps develop skills not previously attained. To further understand cognitive development in Piaget and Vygotsky’s theory, we must first look at the processes involved.
Children will be motivated by an educator’s enthusiasm when the educator is interested in a topic meaningful and relevant to children’s lives. Educators are not only partners in learning but instigators of learning through planned experiences. A blend of child initiated and adult initiated ideas is a valuable key in the provision of relevant experiences. Centres that were found to have a high-quality, play-based learning programme, incorporated integration of music, movement and creative expression Bodrova & Leong (2010
Linda, M. & Linda, P. (2011). Theories and approaches to learning in the early years.
Bowser and Reed [1995] as cited by Bryant et al [1998] argue that as a child progresses through the Education System, their requirements change and this may necessitate a need for different devices. This is not limited to those children with a physical disability but is relevant to all children with SEN as they progress and the Education System places additional burdens upon them. For children with a visual impairment ICT can provide support in various ways; tools to support communication, to improve access to information and as a means of producing learning materials in alternative. There is a wide range of devices and software, which can
Constructivist learning theory is creating meaning from experience. Learning is an active process within a context. Knowledge is constructed as opposed to being acquired. Our personal experiences subjectively shape our knowledge with each learning experience from the time we are born until we die. Constructivism is organic in nature because our learning is developed from prior knowledge within our mind while also constantly broadening with each new life experience. Learning is an autonomously controlled cognitive system, which interacts with its own conditions; this differentiates and modifies the independence of its own structure (Juvova et al., 2015). We as educators must turn away from the mindset that we are simply pouring knowledge