INTRODUCTION
The Creative Curriculum theories and approaches have been birthed since 1978. In 1978 the author, Diane Trister Dodge, created a foundation based off classroom interest areas. The author wanted to discuss the rationale of providing a setting that will encourage learning and development for all children. In 1988 Teaching Strategies was started as well as the creation of the second edition of Creative Curriculum. The second edition provided more information regarding ways teachers can organize their classroom into interest areas that were effective. The research ideas on philosophy, goals, and objectives for children are learning as well as structural guidelines for teaching and working directly with families. Throughout the
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Volume 1 synopsis of the research and theory that underlie the Creative Curriculum for Preschool. The book provides influential research and recommendation for classroom teachers. Volume 2 explores the various areas that teachers may develop in their classroom environment. It discusses the role of the teacher and how to facilitate materials that are used to enhanced learning objectives. Volume 3 explores the research that outlines the importance of literature and the roles of adults when setting up the environments. This entire volume discusses how teachers can promote literacy as a source of enjoyment and encourage families to enhance literacy in the home. Volume 4 main purposes of this book is to support children’s development in counting skills, solving word problems, combining and separating problems. This book highlights the importance on how to facilitate learning by using concrete objects and wording. The last volume within the Creative Curriculum’s fifth edition gives a complete approach to objectives for development and learning.
THE COACH’S GUIDE
The Coach’s guide to the Creative Curriculum is a step by step resource for individualizing professional development. The Coach’s Recording Tool is paired with the coach’s guide
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The authors’ provided activities to support those teachers that may use a hard approach when deciding on what activities that is most effective in the classroom. The guidance gives a practical approach on why teachers should do the things that is most important to the children they are serving in the classroom setting. The creative curriculum focuses on the strength of teacher-child interactions and the importance of building positive relationships. There are an enormous amount of research that is available that details the effects of positive teacher-child relationships in the classroom. Relationships with primary caregivers and teachers also affect children’s relationships with their peers (Howes, Hamilton & Matheson, 1994; Katz, Kramer & Gottman, 1992). Social competence can help provide the ability to build positive relationships with others. Creative learning activities, such as dramatic play, block play, and open ended art activities, can provide opportunities for children to build positive relationships with peers (Wishard, Shivers, Howes & Richie,
At Creative Learning Center’s core value is based on the belief that each child is a gift from God and given their own unique gifts. Creative Learning Center has a faith-based curriculum to provide each child for a faith based life and activities that will also stimulate their spiritual, mental, physical, social and academic growth. Creative Learning Center strategy also includes monthly themes around bible verses and instilling good qualities in every child. At Creative Learning Center, the core Christian belief is considered in every aspects of the center from daily meal planning to disciplinary techniques used at the center.
...would be further motivated to love and study their subjects, and not be just thinking only about grades. If all teachers dedicate their human potential to their students, then students wouldn’t be scared to participate in discussions in spite of many stumbling barriers. The issues Ernest Boyer discusses in “Creativity in the Classroom” are of current interest not only in American educational system, but in my country as well. So,I would recommend this article to be discussed at teachers’ meetings in different types of educational institutions because the criteria of successful and creative teaching the author identifies in his article are universal and simple at the same time: just be dedicated to your job, care about your students, and don’t be afraid to learn and use new ideas in your classroom. Hence, creativity in the classroom often begins with a good teacher.
Through the use of teacher directed and student initiated activities, students become more engaged in learning and therefore develop the skills necessary to become self-directed learners. By stimulating their interest and motivating a love for learning, teachers can use preschool curricula to build school- and life-related skills. There have been links between play and child development, especially in the areas of creativity, reasoning, executive function, and regulation of emotions (Bodrova, Germeroth, & Leong 2103). Active play is needed for healthy brain growth and not only strengthens muscles, but stimulates brain activity leading to higher levels of interest and curiosity. Through play children are able to try out different ways to handle and address stressful or hurtful situations and stand strong when facing challenging situations. Play enhances children’s memories and attention spans and allows children to connect their ideas into realities and realities into deeper understandings. Play supports children’s language development by improving their verbalization and receptive/expressive vocabularies. Using preschool curricula to build school- and life-related skills is a great practice as long as it is developmentally
In doing so I had chosen two activities based on the learning domain literacy, the first resource exposes the child to blocks and the second was an alphabetic sensory table, both of theses resources provided the basic understanding of how literacy can develop from play based learning. Blocks can be placed in any part of the early childhood setting either indoors or outdoor play spaces, however the sensory table can be used in any indoor play space area. As educators we all know that the first few years of any child’s life is essential to their learning, development and growth, and with theses activities we can give new meaning to the interactions young children have towards language, communication and their
NACCCE definition of creativity: ‘Imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value’(NACCCE, 1999:94).Creativity can motivate children to learn new information through a creative outlook. One of the biggest issues teachers have is between teaching required content and integrating creativity into the daily sessions. The National Curriculum and state standard often create boundaries towards the teacher’s ability to develop the lesson, as the intention of including creativity sometimes resorts in a teacher centred learning environment. The teacher’s role should be to generate lessons and create activities that encourage students to be more open to their creative side. This is vital as it exposes children with varying learning styles to different ways of learning.
Preschool is a highly debated area of a child’s educational journey. One of the primary goals of preschool is to prep the child for traditional elementary school. There are various contemporary models of early education that have been constructed to help children develop their educational career. A few examples of these models are the Bank Street Approach, The Reggio Emilia Approach, The Montessori Approach, and the Head Start Program just to name a few. The Waldorf approach is the program of discussion in this particular paper. The Waldorf Approach was originated in 1919 with the basic analysis that children can learn traditional educational subjects through artistic activities. The assumption is that children should dictate the classroom curriculum, and that the material learned should benefit the child as a whole. There are four conditions that teachers focus on when using the Waldorf Approach. The four conditions are Aesthetic, Social, Symbolic, and Sensitive conditions. In a classroom setting these four conditions are put into practice by ...
The curriculum must be broad based, rich, challenging, and encourage the development of students’ creativity, innovation, communication collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving, decision-making, and digital citizenship skills.
Often time’s curriculum is thought of as a set of rules and standards given to teachers to follow. However, more goes into a curriculum than just what meets perceived. Teachers are not just the vehicles from which a curriculum flows but in a sense, they embody it. There are four main different avenues in which curriculum is constructed. It’s constructed through government agencies, publishers, school systems, and teachers. It can be defined as “content, a set of specific educational plans, a changing series of planned learning experiences, or as everything that learners experience in school” (Van Brummelen, 20). A curriculum is strongly built behind a worldview. “A worldview is a comprehensive framework of basic convictions about life. Worldviews
Telling your child's hobbies, pets, as well as learning difficulties and strengths will provide for a more intimate school year (Spencer, 2001). One of the ways in which parents play a critical role in their children?s social development is by encouraging their interactions with other youth (Updegraff, 2001). If children are able to work in group settings, this will not only help the child get along with other students, but it will also lessen the amount of disruptions in class thereby making it easier for the teacher to teach (Barbour, 1997). Parents need to stress the importance of little things your child can do to smooth the teacher?s day and help himself learn, such as listening when classmates answer questions, writing his name on assignments, and keeping his desk and work area tidy (Spencer, 2001). Parents can help your children avoid interrupting. Teachers love enthusiasm but yelling out too often will cause unneeded disruptions. Explain the good times to speak, such as when the teacher is inviting questions and the not so good times, such as when the teacher is talking to another student or giving directions (Spencer, 2001). Practicing these classroom manners will help with less disruptions and a better teaching and learning environment. Parental involvement promotes emotional growth of a child. The attachment between a child and parent is a long-lasting, emotional, learned response. It is the attachment in a parent and child relationship that forms the basis for a child to trust or not to trust their environment (Gestwicki, 2000). This proper attachment is essential for a child to trust other adults, such as their teachers and also to trust other students and make friends.
Since we are born we have imagination and as we grow up this imagination may increase or decrease. Creativity strongly relies in our imagination. Depending on different circumstances people learn to express their creativity openly while other people close themselves and believe they do not have creativity. Creativity is a natural talent that every single human has. Creativity can be used to solve a complex problem in a different manner or just to find innovative ways to have fun. Creativity is thinking out of the box. Even though creativity cannot be taught from scratch there should be a class that is specific for creativity.
First, understanding that children may have a preferred learning style, she incorporates into her lesson plans the strategies which address visual learners, kinesthetic learners, and audio learners. Most children do not have just one learning style, therefore, they benefit through different learning centers. Learning centers include the science center, the math center, the art center, the library, the writing center, and the dramatic play center. Next, she uses teacher centered strategies to lead many of her lesson plans so that she can guide and coach the children through the activities. Since the children are very young, she feels modeling and coaching the children are the most productive techniques. She does try to create lesson plans that vary in complexity and challenge the children based on their own ability
Since then, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction has been a standard reference for anyone working with curriculum development. Although not a strict how-to guide, the book shows how educators can critically approach curriculum planning, studying progress and retooling when needed. Its four sections focus on setting objectives, selecting learning experiences, organizing instruction, and evaluating progress. Readers will come away with a firm understanding of how to formulate educational objectives and how to analyze and adjust their plans so that students meet the objectives. Tyler also explains that curriculum planning is a continuous, cyclical process, an instrument of education that needs to be fine-tuned.
Entering my kindergarten teaching experience in the last quarter of school year I had to quickly become familiar with kindergarten content standards and the school’s curriculum. To do this I observed my mentor teachers instructional time with the children and gained as much information as I could about the children’s educational standing by developing a professional relationship with the my mentor teacher and the children. I learned that the majority of my kindergarten children had not previously attended preschool and that this was their first year of school. I found that interacting with the children in social activities provided me with great insight to their literacy, math, science, and social studies development. In reviewing the children’s class projects, school displays, and an array of their work sample along with my mentor teachers year-long assessments I was able to recognize challenging, emerging and advanced content areas of the children’s core curriculum. These emerging and challenging content areas is what I centered my curriculum planning around. “Information about each child’s learning and development is used to evaluate teaching effectiveness. This may lead to changes in schedule, curriculum and teaching strategies, room set up, resources, and so on.” (Bredekamp and Copple, p. 249)
(Tompkins, 2005). When I first began working on developing a pre-kindergarten program at my current school I was discouraged by a lot of boxed curriculums due to the lack of quality literature available to students. With this in mind I worked with a team to begin developing a well rounded curriculum for our youngest readers that would not only teach them how to read but would allow them to fall in love with reading as an art. Shared reading and thematic units are the crux of this curriculum. The lesson I presented was a trial run of a lesson that is being designed for use next