Best Practices in ECE: A Personal Reflection

Developmental theories that resonate with me and will be implemented in the classroom

The developmental theories I had heard of by name before starting my Master's with Moreland University were International Baccalaureate (IB), HighScope, Montessori and Reggio Emelia. I felt I was most familiar with HighScope as my school bases its curriculum on this development theory. If I was asked to describe the development theories of the other theories I had heard of I would be lost for words.

I did a deep dive analysis on all four of the theories highlighted above which I feel make up the majority of those on offer in Chinese International school that I have been made aware of. I found that HighScope was quite similar in approach to IB and that Montessori and Reggio Emelia had a lot more student-led learning compared to HighScope and IB. Reggio Emelia curriculum resonated with my idea of ideas for teaching early childhood learners. I really liked the idea of their project-based learning (PBL) that is based on the children's interests where the teacher creates knowledge together with the children in a learning partnership.

Currently, I am teaching in a school that uses HighScope and the timetable makes it a little hard to introduce PBL as the majority of the children's time is already allocated. Although I will be pushing to change an hour of free time on Friday to an optional PBL that children can choose to join in with for the month or do their own thing in the corners. This way I will get four lessons to work on the project with children in a month and hopefully can also complete a STEAM project that relates to the theme of the month. My hope is that PBL opportunities can mesh well with the plan-do-review of HighScope and also give the children an opportunity to let their voices be heard as we design, plan, execute, and review the experiment together.

Intentionally embracing diversity and inclusive culture in the classroom

I always knew that it is important to embrace diversity and teach children about other cultures to promote healthy ideas of equality in students. While teaching in China I was surprised how some young children could already be afraid of or dislike certain skin colours. Through the research, at Moreland University I gained more ideas of how to help students intentionally encounter diversity and encourage them to embrace these differences.

While in class although all my students are Chinese there are differences in the regions of China they come from. When we talk about where we come from I try to get students to think deeper than just saying China, and to tell me where in China and something interesting to see or eat where they are from. This way we can recognise the differences between all being Chinese and then relate this to other people of this world and let the children know we are all human.

In the classroom environment, I try to include wall art that is representative of different races, and gender as well as including disabilities. This usually has the effect of stimulating a conversation with the teacher and the children asking; "Why is that person in a chair with wheels?", "Why is there a black girl on the wall?" "Why are they not all Chinese?". These kinds of questions are exactly what I am looking for to provide a teachable moment about embracing diversity and other cultures. Another great idea was to fill the reading corner with books about different cultures. I had already added books to my reading corner to cover SEL learning but I realised that most of my books were English stories or Chinese stories in English. I decided to try to get some books that covered stories from other cultures written in English that also had brilliant pictures showing cultural differences and the differences in the appearance of people from around the world.

I also liked the idea of inviting families to a special lunch and presentation where each family would prepare a special meal from their hometown or country and share something interesting about the region or country they grew up in. My current school has a majority of Beijingers but I would still like to try it to see if the parents could bring some of their cultures from the regions they lived in before coming to Beijing giving us all something interesting to learn.

Ways to minimize the impact of school shutdowns on students in Early Childhood Education programs

I knew coming into school shutdowns that parents, teachers and students were all negatively impacted in different ways. I tried to minimize the impact on the children's social-emotional learning in transition times and breaks by providing them with a space to play and interact which they seemed to love. While discussing points about this with the cohort it opened up my eyes to a variety of different ways to help minimise this impact for all those involved. As well as an excellent discussion we had on the positive and negative effects of online learning for children.

One of the biggest things was to remember that parents are rushed for a time even more than before and not all parents have an equal level of technical expertise. It is important to have clear instructional videos that are intuitive and require little explanation to resolve issues. Also during a lockdown children are locked away from other children and miss out on all the social problem solving and communication practice they would have in person. It was important to provide time before a lesson starts and after that, the children can use independent of a teacher to play and have fun as kids. This worked even better if there were some functions in the room for the children to play with together. Break out rooms with movable puzzle pieces, a whiteboard to draw on together, a chess game that they could play.

Also one of the biggest things I realised with online teaching is that the availability of the parent often dictated whether the child could join the class or not. As often the phone, tablet or computer the baby would use was taken to work and the grandma was left to look after the baby in the day. This lead us to also recording our classes and sending the videos for the children that could not make it to the live class. Of course the live class would be better but watching a class is better than no class. I also tried to make it fun for these students to watch at a different time by engaging the children to say their names and hello in the future.

The ideas of the negative and harmful effects of online learning were also something I was made more aware of at Moreland. Now I knew we could not have the babies in front of the screen all day as this would not be healthy. There was also posture while sitting to think about, screentime from other afterschool classes and if they played games. It was a good idea to write up guidelines for the appropriate use of computers using scientific research to advise parents on screentime, posture and other online related negative externalities they could avoid.

Developmentally Appropriate Practice and its importance for young learners

Developmentally appropriate practices are the methods that promote each child's optimal development and learning through a strengths-based, play-based approach to joyful, engaged learning. With DAP we recognizing that each child is unique. This uniqueness is evident in their background experiences, culture, skills, abilities, language, and all this makes each student's needs different. It is important to know how to address these needs and tailor learning to meet them in their zone of proximal development.

In my school, I start with the children as toddlers at the age of three and then have four years with them. For the majority of the time, they are with me especially at the youngest level play-based learning is the most effective way to capture their interest and teach them new things. One of the most important things the children learn in the years with me is SEL. I find free play monitored by a teacher ready to step in for conflict resolution are some of the best hands-on teachable moments they get for this. I also supplement this with stories and circle time about how to manage your emotions and understand them. But as we all know theory is one thing and applying it in the heat of the moment is another. Having a teacher there to guide the children through an emotional social encounter helps reinforce their SEL.

Part of the HighScope approach is active participatory learning which involves materials, manipulation, choice, child language and thought, and adult scaffolding. This approach is very good in small groups and creating groups of two or three to collaborate together to achieve a goal. There is a lot to do here and even if the child knows exactly how to complete the task on their own they must now develop the skills to express themselves, negotiate materials and the space to complete the task. This can sometimes be frustrating for my smart children as they want to complete the task quickly without talking but I gamify the process and if one group tries to work independently of each other their progress must be forfeited and they start again. Another place the children can participate in active participatory learning with less adult scaffolding is in free play which is amazing to witness the creativity and collaboration in the blocks and drama corners. They also independently develop problem-solving skills the ability to make decisions and negotiate the use of the space, toys and equipment within the corners.

Impact of effective scaffolding and differentiation in the Early Childhood classroom

As mentioned before every child is unique and thus has different needs. It is important as a teacher to know your children so you can effectively scaffold for them. We must bring them up to the edge of their zone of proximal development without crossing outside of it and teaching something too complex and not scaffolding learning that they can achieve on their own. It is our job to introduce a new schema and the child connects that schema to the existing schema or creates a new schema. From here the child will be able to play with this new knowledge and manipulate it in ways they understand. An example of this scaffolding is demonstrating how to paint then stepping back and letting the child explore different brush strokes and objects they can create. Then stepping back in when the child has encountered a problem they need assistance solving like how to clean the paintbrush or how to get green when they only have blue, yellow and red. Once the child has mastered mixing colours and painting it would be ineffective to try to scaffold this again and they no longer need this type of scaffolding.

Although we may find that some children need minimal scaffolding to master a task whereas others may need reminding or a few attempts until they remember this new skill and master it. This is important to know your students and have a mental idea of how each student progresses as you teach. This way you know who needs more scaffolding and when.

Differentiation to meet the students' needs is also important and can present itself in adjusting your teaching style to accommodate students struggling to comprehend something visually. We must acknowledge the multiple intelligences that we all have and differentiate our teaching to cater to the different intelligences children use in the classroom. Verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, musical, naturalistic, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, and Interpersonal intelligence are just some of the different intelligences we can encounter. Some students will be stronger in some of these than others. When presenting new knowledge we should try to present it using multiple intelligences for the best opportunity for all children to grasp the new knowledge quickly. As well as differentiating the way we teach and the process of teaching we can also differentiate the final product. With ECE art we are mainly teaching the use of fine motor skills and relating it to a theme we are talking about. If a child does not want to draw a school and instead thinks it will be funny to draw a school broken to pieces we can encourage this by getting them to use their fine motor skills to show us the details of this broken school. The fine motor skills are developed and also they are able to relate their picture to the theme of school and use vocabulary to describe what their picture shows.

Other examples of differentiation are providing translations or visuals for ELLs, allowing children of differing abilities to choose to draw or write an answer, creating groups that have more capable peers to support those struggling, encourage children to research asking mum and dad or Siri to complete a project. The use of differentiation and scaffolding is very important in ECE to achieve the development goals for all children and ensuring those who struggle are appropriately supported to reach the semesterly goals.

Importance of planning a curriculum around social experiences in Early Childhood

As I mentioned before SEL is the most important thing children are learning at these early levels. In these early years, children develop a schema of the world around them through social interactions with those around them and physical interactions with the environment. As an ECE teacher can tell you these interactions can often go awry and children must learn to develop their social-emotional skills to successfully navigate these situations. The children that manage to develop strong social-emotional skills have more friends, have more enjoyable interactions with others making them happier and are highly motivated to do well in school. The children who struggle to develop these SEL skills struggle to engage or follow directions, do poorly in school and struggle to make and maintain friendships.

For me, I try to use every social problem as a teachable SEL moment that is important for my children. As part of HighScope we have a conflict resolution guide that helps to deescalate the problem and focus on finding a solution that involves the students in conflict. This helps to drive home the SEL ideas for those struggling and for those around them too. As well as teachable moments SEL is woven through the topics we cover teaching them about emotions and different coping mechanisms, how to build and maintain relationships to name a few. My wall displays and books in my reading corner also cover SEL to catch my childrens' eyes and encourage conversation. This abundance of materials and teachable moments provides a warm and welcoming environment with many opportunities to promote children’s social-emotional development.

Impact of applying new knowledge about Early Childhood Education on students

My experience while doing my Master's with Moreland has taught me that there is lots of research out there and only the teacher who knows the students' needs is able to clearly identify what is best. Following an ECE pedagogy and curriculum blindly will give you moderate success as they have put a lot of research into them. Having a teacher that has knowledge in many development theories, pedagogy and curriculum allows for them to take the best of the best and give it to their children. There is no one single approach that is the best but the use of multiple approaches that are developmentally appropriate and differentiated to the needs of your current students is what's important. We as teachers should be able to identify the strengths in the curriculum we need to use at a school and then leverage our knowledge to fill in the gaps where the curriculum is lacking. Just as our children are learning with us we must adapt and be aware of new research and best practices. To be effective teachers we also need to be lifelong learners and lifelong experimenters not afraid to try new ideas when we learn about them. The impact of our teaching in developing young learners with growth mindsets will shape the world of tomorrow and can only happen with a growth mindset of our own.