Description: Creating a Caring Community of Learners & Social/Emotional Development

Learning Outcomes: At the end of this module, students will be able to:

1.       Summarize basic principles of creating a developmentally appropriate early education classroom, including appropriate materials.

2.       Identify the role of play in the early childhood classroom in addition to experiential and hands-on learning techniques.

3.       Plan developmentally appropriate lessons for children B-Grade 2 formulating child-centered, population-specific learning experiences and activities.

Readings: Bredekamp Chapters 8 & 14

Assessment

·         Assessment 2: Activity Facilitators: Building Bridges to Practice

This assignment will help you to process, examine, question, and extend your knowledge of child development and learning in cultural context. Just as your students are meeting the Common Core standards by learning to “read like detectives and write like investigative reporters” across the content areas, so will you, as a participant in this course, focus on the skills of close reading (and re-reading) of the course readings, argumentation and discussion supported by evidence from the text, and extended writing related to the readings. In our Touro College courses, “text” is used broadly. Texts are any experiences from which meaning and understanding can be derived, including informational and literary writings, research studies, videos, PowerPoint presentations, websites, and purposeful group projects.

The Activity Facilitator course routine will begin in module 5 and occur during the 4 subsequent in-person class meetings. The purpose of this course routine is for you to collaborate in an exploration of connections between ideas encountered in the readings and your own teaching. During this course routine, a Group of Facilitators (3-5 candidates in each group) will lead the class (for 15-20 minutes) in an exercise that helps analyze the ideas presented in the readings and the implications these may have for your teaching practice.

During Module 1 you will be given an opportunity to choose one of 4 course modules (module 3, 4, 5, 10) and form an Activity Facilitators Group you will work together to prepare and present your class activities for the chosen course module.

Successful Activity Facilitators will conceive of ways that ideas in the readings can be actualized in teaching practice. Theory may be practiced through various aspects of teaching such as instructional choices, instructional design, classroom organization, and expectations, and interactions with parents and the community outside of the classroom. The activity should engage the entire class and should not be a presentation of the module’s topics and readings. For example, the Activity Facilitators may prepare an activity that models the concepts presented or helps participants to brainstorm and demonstrate ways in which the ideas of others might be manifested in their own teaching practices (both inside and outside the classroom). Course instructor will explain this course routine during the initial class meetings.

As Facilitators, participants plan and lead an experience with their classmates that helps to development the mental agility for translating theory and ideas into practice or reversing the situation, to unearth the often unnamed philosophies underlying educational decisions at all levels. As a program, we value a classroom culture wherein students are able to learn with and from each other. By engaging in this course routine, as both a facilitator and a participant, all participants are called upon to take responsibility for directing their own learning as part of a community of learners.

Purpose and Objectives 

In this course routine, Facilitators and participants alike will work together to discern real world context for theoretical ideas as they seek to answer the question: What does this mean in relation to my practice? Reflective practice depends on the teacher’s capacity to be a researcher of their practice as well as a practitioner, to move easily back and forth between abstract ideas and concrete methods.

Expectations 

• The planned activity has participants engage in a process to make connections between theories and practice. 

• The planned activity is clearly connected to the readings. 

• The planned activity requires participants to related ideas in the reading(s) to 
their teaching.  
• Facilitators should submit the objectives for their activity to the instructor prior 
to the module in which they are presenting. 
For module dates, please see the course overview below or the course calendar on Canvas.