Critical Components of Early Learning Catch-up (Pre-K/K)

1. Critical Components of Early Learning Catch-up (Pre-K/K) September 13, 2011

2. Purpose for coming together • To examine the foundations of Early Learning • To explore and reflect on being on Early Learning Teacher • To provide time to plan and design an emergent curriculum and assessments • To reflect on and respond to data

3. Our day Early Learning What are the foundations of Early Learning? Early Learning Teacher Who am I as an Early Learning Teacher? Emergent Curriculum Why and how can the curriculum be emergent?

4. Early Learning What are the foundations of Early Learning?

5. Place Mat Activity 1. Individually think and write down words and phrases related to the foundations of Early Learning. 2. With your table, discuss and write down the common trends in the centre of your placemat

6. Principles of early learning • Children as Competent Learners • Holistic Development and Learning • Strong & Positive Relationships • Stimulating & Dynamic Environment • Early Learning Program Guide

7. The Early Learning Brain

8. Early Learning One of the human brain’s most amazing capacities is its ability to sculpt itself based on what it experiences. Wolfe & Nevills, 2004

9. Make time each day to...

10. CREATE • Provide freedom to create. • Encourage creativity. • Make time for creativity. • Creating is NOT limited to visual arts. • Realize the importance of process not product. • Creative play can become messy... Creativity and imagination are the key to producing life long learners. - Robert & Michelle Root-Berstein, Sparks of Genius

11. Move • Children must move in order to learn. • Outdoor play is important – rain or shine! • The three main learning styles are: visual, auditory & KINESTHETIC Movement is the door to learning. -Paul E. Dennison, Brain Gym

12. Sing • Sing to the air! It doesn’t need to be a performance. • Songs are “hooks to hang a memory on.” • We always remember the songs we learned from our childhood.

13. Interactions - language • Problem solve. • Extend language. • Explore & ask questions. • Powerful interactions. If you want to have intelligent conversations with children, give your own assumptions a rest, put on your listening ears and hear what a child is really saying. - Jane Healy, Creating Intelligent Conversations with your Children

14. Observe • Be engaged with all their senses. • Develop awareness. • Take time to notice what is happening in the world around us. If you want to do something good for a child...give him an environment where he can touch things as much as he wants. - Buckminster Fuller in Letter to Children on Earth

15. Literacy • Children who grow up to be readers are children who have been read to. • Our goal is not to “get to the end of the book” but rather to instill of love of reading and of stories. • Allow for children to interrupt the story with questions and comments.

16. Play • Playing is learning and learning is playing. • Play is inquiry. • The foundation of play supports the house of higher learning.

17. Early Learning Teacher Who am I as an Early Learning Teacher?

18. Discover your attitudes and habits of mind. What changes would you like to see? Personal Reflection Personal Reflection

19. The Early Learning Teacher as the: Observer & Listener

20. Observer and Listener • Becoming a field researcher in child development • Appreciating the details of children’s complex play • Observing before intervening or reacting • Listening to accommodate (or value) children’s ideas • Listening to legitimize the child’s point of view

21. The Early Learning Teacher as the: Documenter

22. Documenter Prekindergarten Kindergarten Holistic Learning - pages 28-33 (Early Learning Program Guide) • Intellectual • Socio-emotional • Physical • Spiritual Observable Items - pages 24-27 (Children First: A Resource for Kindergarten) • Intellectual • Socio-emotional • Physical • Spiritual

23. What are observable items? How will these holistic observations influence you as an observer, listener and documenter?

24. Aligning Documentation with… Prekindergarten Kindergarten COR Early Learning Principles Outcomes Early Learning Principles

25. The Early Learning Teacher as the: Assessor

26. Assessment Effective educators continuously assess the degree to which children are achieving the curricular outcomes. Evidence is gathered through observing, documenting, and interpreting to reveal what children have learned from experiences both inside and outside the classroom.

27. Purpose of Assessment • To collect evidence to guide daily planning (Assessment for Learning). • To assist children in becoming aware of their thinking (metacognition) and to make it visible by documenting the learning process (Assessment as Learning). • To record evidence of children’s learning to report to caregivers and to in-school and school division administrators (Assessment of Learning).

28. Documentation Feeds Assessment • Documentation provides a transparent process of how children make meaning of ideas and develop theories. PROOF • Documentation provides information about children’s learning and progress. CONTINUUM OF LEARNING • Documentation is used to make children’s learning visible. METACOGNTION

38. Documentation Panels • The Power of Documentation in the Early Childhood Classroom • Sharing

39. Experimenting with Colour PPK.1 Analyze the effects of various forms of energy, including light, sound, waves, head, and magnetism, and the effects of forces. Here’s how we did it . . . Elliott – We needed milk and we needed some milk and we needed some dish wash. Lukas – We put the milk in. And then we put the colours in. Keely – For our experiment, first we got a bowl and then we got milk, we poured the milk into the bowl and then what we did, we put all the colours of food colouring in and then we got straws to blow it and then we put dish soap in. What happened when we put the dish soap in? Elliott – The colours moved and they changed to brown. Lukas – It moved the colours. We poured milk in. We put in food colouring. We blew it with a straw

43. Evaluation Evaluation compares assessment information against criteria based on curriculum outcomes for the purpose of communicating to students, teachers, parents/caregivers, and others about student progress and to make informed decisions about the teaching and learning process. Reporting of student achievement must be based on the achievement of curriculum outcomes.

44. The Assessment Cycle in the Emergent Curriculum Evaluate

45. Authentic assessment • Authentic assessment clearly assesses the outcomes in a context that reflects the actual learning experience. In other words, we assess in the exact same way we have invited students to learn. • Authentic assessment also invites us to ask how students may come to apply the knowledge and skills they have gained and assess them based on that information.

46. Assessment plan • An assessment plan clarifies the learning destinations through establishing criteria. • It clarifies how evidence of learning will be collected – through products, observations and conversations. • An assessment plan is realized over the course of an entire unit and, ultimately, over the course of a year. • It aims to provide multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning. • It clarifies how students will be assessed formatively and summatively, how they will be offered feedback and how their progress will be reported.

47. In the north east school division we believe: • that effective instruction depends on high quality assessment. Therefore, we expect all assessments to provide accurate and timely information about student achievement. Each assessment must adhere to standards of quality that all staff know and follow. • the primary purpose of assessment is to improve student learning. It is the expectation of the NESD that all assessments will be directly linked to specific student learning outcomes, use assessment methodology appropriate for the subject/grade level, and will allow for the effective communication of results. • that assessment can serve as a powerful form of instruction. By involving students in the assessment and evaluation of their own achievement under direct supervision, teachers can use assessment and feedback to help students progress towards meeting the expected learning outcomes for each subject, at each grade level. • that a variety of assessment tools are considered appropriate for use within the NESD. Any ‘grade’ should include varied forms of assessment. • that a differentiated approach allows all students to be assessed on student learner outcomes in a manner that is appropriate to each individual. • that achievement and behavior should be assessed and reported separately.

48. The Emergent Curriculum Why is the curriculum emergent in Prekindergarten and Kindergarten? How can this be done?

49. In Emergent Curriculum, teachers plan in response to the children’s interests and concerns, and curriculum expands into genuine inquiry, as children and teachers together become participatory co-learners through multiple ways of learning and creating (in drawing, dance, clay, wire, and so forth) so that new cultures of identity and classroom citizenship develop from it. Emergent Curriculum in the Primary Classroom, Carol Anne Wien The Emergent Curriculum

50. The Renewed Curriculum 2010 Saskatchewan Curriculum 2009 Children First: A Kindergarten Resource Play & Exploration